2018 Garden Update
Well, I had all intentions of posting little progress updates throughout the year , but I guess that never happened and the last garden post was back in March where I shared plans of everything that I planned to grow this year. So, to finish the growing season off, I thought I’d share a little recap of the garden this summer. I actually really enjoyed the veggie garden this year, and felt that since the past few years that I’ve been growing my own veg, this past summer was definitely the best and we had the best harvests!
I feel like after 2-3 years of growing veg, I feel like I know what can and can’t grow in our little garden. We have a huuuge oak tree in our garden that shades over a lot of the garden, and with it being a north-east facing garden, it’s not the best for sunlight in general. The tree also takes a lot of nutrients from the soil, so we struggle to grow anything in our garden to be honest haha!
Salad
I did so well with salads this year – we had quite a few varieties of salad leaves and it ended up that from about June till August, we didn’t have to buy any lettuce from the shops, which was so good because I’ve been trying to reduce our plastic use this year so this helped massively, as we’d usually buy a bag of lettuce leaves each week.
My radishes and cucumber didn’t do so well though. The radishes were at their perfect time to be picked right as we went on our two week roadtrip, so by the time we’d got home, they’d all bolted and gone to seed and didn’t taste as good. I have no idea what even happened to the cucumber – and this was the only one I manged to harvest as the plant frazzled in the heatwave we had.
Tomatoes
My favourite thing to grow, because they taste SO much better than shop bought tomatoes and the varieties are endless. My absolute favourite variety is sungold, which is a yellow cherry tomato which are so sweet and juicy. I only grew one of each plant because usually I forget about the tomatoes, but this year I wish I grew a few more plants as I never had enough for all the salads we went through.
Green Beans, Courgettes and Carrots
The rest of the veg didn’t do to well this year. I had a massive crop of green beans a couple years ago, but since then they’ve just never grown to the same amount as before. I literally had a handfull of them this year.
The carrots grew to be baby carrots, but they tasted absolutely disgusting and super bitter, so they all got ripped up, which was such a shame as I was really looking forward to those as I don’t usually grow carrots.
The courgettes did better than usual this year, but still not too great. Usually from two plants I get a courgette from each (I know right, where is this massive bumper crop of excessive amounts of courgettes that everyone else seems to get), but this year I think I managed about 2 or 3 across the summer from each plant. I just don’t know where they’re going wrong, as everyone always says they’re one of the easiest things to grow, but mine just end up going mouldy before they get big enough to harvest. Any suggestions?
And here’s the best harvest that I had all at once this year. Just look at those tomatoes! So so good! I know for sure next year I’ll be growing loads of lettuce again, and probably some more tomatoes this time around. Hopefully the courgettes do a little better next year too, and I want to try growing some other salad veg, as I find this is where we spend most of our money on fruit and veg during the summer, and it’s super simple to grow.
What’s your favourite things to grow? Are you growing anything during the winter? I’d love to, but I just don’t have the space to get them started while I still have things growing in the ground. Though I do have a couple plants of kale and some swiss chard going strong, so that should keep me going another couple of months!
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