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Martin Brown · 21-10-2010, 01:28 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

On 20/10/2010 09:44, wrote:
Martin wrote:
Purple sprouting broccolli, sprouts and calabrese are fun and not too
difficult. And fresh lettuce just from the garden tastes nicer than
supermarket grown. Though you end up with a glut if not careful.

I had some good purple last year, but this year's was a failure, and I'm not
sure I've got any coming for this winter. Sprouts are always too small and

Don't give up on it just yet.

Mine last year was eaten to within an inch of its life by caterpillars
when I was away on holiday (came back to skeletal plants and fat
caterpillars) and still it managed to do OK for me in the spring.

fiddley to deal with, and are just as cheap to buy! Although I do have 49
plants on the go atm. :-) All a bit small cos they went in a bit late,
though.

I reckon they are a bit sweeter just fresh off the plant. Almost time to
go off picking sloes now we have had a couple of frosts. I don't grow
them in my garden but they are in all the hedgerows round here.

I am not a fan of lettuce, and the times I've tried growing it, it's either
died or bolted, then been fed to the chickens. I have a load in the
coldframe in the garden, destined for the chickens, all bought at 5-10p a
strip from B+Q last weekend! We shall see.

Grows easily enough from seed (but seed doesn't keep that well). Again I
like odd varieties with colours or funny shaped leaves.

Ones that are nicer home grown, but a bit of a pain to grow:
* sweetcorn
Slug ate all mine at 4" tall this year.

Ours were doing well, we thought, but then they just stopped growing. Got
to about 4' tall and then ...

Strange. I usually have a bumper crop all at the same time. This year
didn't get enough decent sized plants to even set the fruits.

Raspberries are fairly easy and with the right varieties available for a
fair chunk of time and not too heavily pinched by the birds. Other
fruits like blackcurrants, blueberries and jostaberries need netting to
get any crop at all.

I had no problem at all with my red and black currants, possibly cos there
are so many plants that the birds could never eat them all! :-)

Never had the birds touch redcurrants. Don't know why. If you have hens
it is worth growing a jostaberry bush just to watch them jump up at it
to get the fruit. Birds will kill for them!

Raspberries are a bit of a bugbear of mine atm, as - I don't know if it's
the variety (we inheritted them on the plot), but they seem to go from
unripe to overripe and squishy /awfully/ quickly. The yellow ones seem to
last a lot longer on the branch before turning to squish. I'm seriously
tempted to bin the lot (and there are a /lot/) and start with fresh ones.
:-(

You have to pick over most raspberry canes every day or couple of days
in season to maximise yeild. Let a few go off and the little fruit flies
get hold and things can go downhill quickly.

I like growing unusually coloured cultivars. Purple or white carrots,
yellow courgettes, black tomatoes (actually not worth it at all), yellow
ones are fun tho.

Me too! Although they always seem to be such a disappointment. :-(
Couldn't agree more about the black tomatoes - tasteless and squishy, every
variety we've tried! May have another go with a different one next year,

We do swaps with other local growers of slightly odd veg.

but I'm not holding out hope. Did get some lovely pink cherry tomatoes this
year (I believe they were 'garden pearl', which I believed to be red, but
whatever it was, they were definitely pink!), and a new favourite for
reliability on the yellow - 'vova yellow' (seeds picked up from Hampshire
potato day) did exceptionally well for me this year.

But nothing beats my GD for taste! :-D

I have them coming up as volunteers most years but they seldom get big
enough to have more than a single truss.

Yellow courgettes I've never managed to get going well, no idea why - best
we get is always the 'green bush' courgettes, which crop and crop forever
(picked some just this weekend still!), but the yellows always either don't
germinate, or like this year, they are the ones eaten by the slugs when the
green ones are left untouched! (And yes, I mean the plants, pre-fruit, so
no idea why!!)

They are briefly vulnerable just after transplanting so I always put a
few slug pellets down. Never noticed any bias in yellow vs green ones
surviving - this year the yellows thrived and the greens didn't.

Regards,
Martin Brown