On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:32:46 -0800 (PST), harry wrote:

You are on a hiding to nothing.

It won't be easy for sure.

The soil will be light and sandy = dry in Summer and impoverished.

Might be soils vary considerably across wales from peat to sand via
clay.

Any compost etcyou put in vanishes in a few weeks.

That will depend on the soil.

You will lose 6 weeks out of the growing season due to altitude.

Yes the season is short, we are at 1400' on the North Pennines, might
be a 8 week shorter season.

Nights can be very cold.

Temps will be 2 or 3C lower than at sea level.

Wind can be a majorproblem.

That is the major problem here, stuff can be literally blown out of
the ground.

Forget about brassicas but roots do OK.

If it's a windy location forget about anything that has much top
growth. It'' just get thrashed to death and the plant will spend all
it's energy repairing that rather than producing the crop.

Potatos do OK, get blight resistant varieties.

A tunnel greenhouse is imperative.

Ha! If you can get it to stay up in the wind.

You need to make preparations to collect and store irrigation water in
Winter for Summer use.

Not a problem up here, even in the driest summers the ground (peaty)
is still moist. A lot will depend on the soil of course.

Most fruit trees are a disaster even if sheltered. The shrubby ones
do mediocre Raspberries, gooseberries etc

We have gooseberries, red and black currants. They crop reasonably
well (without proper tending as well) the big problem is getting a
window in the weather to pick the damn things when they are just
right.

We find that stuff just takes a season or three to get established,
combination of the lower temps and short season. Things may even
appear to have died but come back after missing a season.

--
Cheers
Dave.