Successes and failures in the veggie growing

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As we come towards the end of the growing year I felt it would be good to look back on the successes and failures of our veggie growing.

Part way through the growing year we had to face the fact that having the control bed in a neighbour’s garden in full sun and the moon bed in our garden in partial shade did not make for a fair trial of whether growing by the moon really improved yields and flavour. We will be running a better organised trial next year in our new veggie garden (more to come on this when David has taken some more photos).

However, we still worked the moon bed only on the correct days whilst the control bed was worked as and when with no reference to the moon calendar. So what were the results:

Root crops: aside from the carrots which were attacked by the dreaded root fly, our root crops did extremely well. Large well formed onions which are keeping well and extremely large parsnips which we are just starting to harvest, now we have had a frost.

These are some of the ‘better’ looking remaining carrots, edible but only just! We did have a lot of good early carrots though so it isn’t all bad news.

The onions from the moon bed were slightly larger than those in the control bed BUT a patch that were sown late in a very poor area of ground, which was neither part of the moon or the control bed, grew even bigger!

I had thought I’d photographed these when they were lifted – can’t find the photo so this is just a selection not from any particular area of growing.

Having only just started to harvest the parsnips it is a little difficult to say which are going to be bigger – the two from the moon bed were both woppers! We have scraped away a little of the soil from around a couple of parsnips in the control bed and they seem to be of a similar size. Celeriac is still growing in the control bed, we did not have room for in the moon bed, this is the first year we have tried this and it is looking promising.

Leaf crops, these did better in the control bed than they did in the moon bed, in part this could be because the control bed was in full sun so the ground warmed up earlier and the seeds got going more quickly. Cabbages of all varieties grew well and we are still harvesting these as needed. These savoy cabbages may look a little tatty but they taste wonderful…

These smaller cabbages will heart up for a month or so yet.

The leeks were a total disaster – still not much thicker than my index finger even now

Though as you can see the parsnip tops are good and healthy and can be used in soups and casseroles.

Salad green type crops all did well, it would be a braver person than me who said that either crop was better :)

Spinach beet did extremely well and we still have a few plants growing the plan next year is to try swiss chard too.

On the ‘fruits’ front we had bumper harvest of peas and broad beans which are now tucked away in the freezer for use in winter. In both cases, as I think I wrote earlier the crop from the moon bed was better than that from the control bed. French and runner beans did okay but I think next year we will have to start them off in loo rolls or the like and plant out once they are growing. The struggle for us is not being able to plant things outside until a month later than in the south of England. Tomatoes, whilst not part of any trial gave us the best crop we have ever had, grown in what, at any other time of year, is the bulb house (no growing toms. out of doors up here!)

So to the flower plants – cauliflower and broccoli. Both of these were an unmitigated disaster in both the moon and the control bed. They grew poorly, the broccoli bolted, the flea beetle attacked them, the large white caterpillars attacked them… eventually we heaved the whole lot out, shredded and composted them. We have never had any real success with caulis or broccoli – no matter where we were living… We’ll keep working on this though.

Finally the potatoes great crop, couldn’t have asked for better and we are enjoying the main crop tatties now.

So conclusions – well none really as I said at the beginning we need to run another trial next year in the new veggie garden.

• 20 Oct, 2009
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