"philgurr" wrote

For us in the far north, this has been the year without
a summer. Some things have done well but there have
been disasters. The flower borders are looking as they
should have looked in mid July. The beetroot are up
and down, mostly down but the onions and leeks (grown
in a raised bed for the first time) have been stunning.
Peas have only produced in the last three weeks and the
runner beans were written off by late July. I have just
returned from a week 'darn sarf' to see the grandchildren
only to find one of the best crops of runner beans that
I have ever had. There was nothing there a week ago
and this morning my first picking of the season yielded
4 kilos of super beans. This must be high summer for us!


The problem we found (just south of the Thames) was that everything except
the peas were very slow to start into decent growth, for the first year I
can remember the outdoor chillies are only now flowering and fruiting so
will be too late for a crop. The aubergines we grubbed up last week, no
point in leaving them there. The onions and shallots, not a good crop,
seemed a bad year (or should that be good year) for white rot too. Carrots
have done well as have the Early Onward peas and beans and also the
cabbages. Good crop of potatoes but lots of slug holes and scab. Not sure
all the Butternuts will ripen enough for storage.

Considering the slow start my Hedychium greenii is flowering superbly this
year which seems to have bucked the trend.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK