As I’m winding down the Croft Share weekly veg scheme over the next few weeks I thought I’d write a run down of the good, the pretty good and the ugly of the 2023 season.
Good: Obviously the amazing Polycrub. What an excellent growing environment it is – very warm, but not too much condensation. The tomatoes did brilliantly in this space and for the first time ever we had a really good crop of peppers. The Polycrub was also good for some extra early French beans and sugar snaps.
Broccoli – I think I’ve picked some form of broccoli most weeks since March. This brassica really likes it in Bornaskitaig.
All the other brassicas, cabbage, kale and Spring greens. These plants didn’t love the long dry spell in June but they grew well in the end.
Yellow courgettes, I don’t know why they’ve done so well this year, they just did!
Second early potatoes – I’ve yet to find a maincrop potato that I’m really satisfied with, but Charlottes and every other second early I’ve grown have always done well. I think for next year we should just concentrate on what works and grow lots of second earlies and do some trials of a few different maincrops. The downside of second earlies is that they can’t really be left in the soil once they’re ready. But here anything left for too long in the ground suffers from slug attack anyway.
Onions – the onions did very well this year, very little bolting and there’s something very satisfying about pulling up onions.
Mange tout – always reliable, they even escaped the attention of the voles.
Pretty good: French beans did suffer from some furry vandal biting through the stems. Luckily this happened over a few weeks rather than all at once. We’ve a plan involving aluminium tubes for next year.
Ugly: Anyone who’s read this blog can guess I’m going to say voles! They ate nearly all the beetroot and most of the carrots. They also had a bit of a chew on some of the brassicas.
The long dry spell in June was lovely at the time, but it did have a downside. Most of the slugs were killed off, but other pests that I’m not used to dealing with really benefitted. First there was a plague of leather jackets in the net tunnel. Strangley I haven’t seen a corresponding quantity of Daddy Long legs so I’m wondering if the voles did do me one small favour and ate all the leather jackets. Nature is brutal!
In the greenhouse I twice had a problem with green caterpillars, although they were pretty easy to just remove and relocate to inside a chicken’s stomach. The final pest in the pest parade of 2023 was red spider mite. I always get a bit of this but it’s never really been a problem before. This year there was more of it, they suck the life out of things like French beans. Next year I’ll need to be more vigilant and remove any sign of it. No doubt I’ll plan 2024 with an attack strategy for leather jackets, voles, green caterpillars and red spider mite and it’ll be cold and wet all Spring and it’ll be my old foe the slug that I’m dealing with.
This week’s Croft Shares have the following:
Small – sprouts and tops, Winter squash, sugar snaps, tomatoes and kale. If the sugar snaps have been damaged by the weather I might have to put something else in instead.
Medium – Leeks, sprouts, broccoli, red cabbage, swede mustard greens and something else, not sure what yet. There are small quantities of some of the remaining summer crops, I can’t be sure how much there is until I pick them.