Successes and poor performers in a challenging summer

Despite the long awaited sunshine we have even enjoying this week, we have had a rather challenging year garden wise so far this year with many commenting "what summer?"!

Which got me thinking - what is doing well in this cool, wet summer?

We are a good few weeks past the mid year mark so I thought now would be a good time to reflect.

So my stars of the patch so far are definitely all the beans (broad beans, peas, French beans) these were slow to start and were impacted by the lower than usual temperatures but perhaps not so much by the lack of sun and they would have certainly enjoyed all the rain once the temperature was warm enough.

Parsnips also are doing well, as are the Egyptian walking onions and the globe artichokes have been steady. Kai Lan is quite happy in these conditions, as are salad crops and the HSL rat tail radishes have done really well whilst adding a lovely floral display if you like that kind of thing!

Of the low performers it has to be the tenders - I am still waiting for the big luscious leaves of the squash plants and the flowers haven't made an appearance yet - that's the ones that escaped slug and snail fest! And I've been feeding those squash lots of worm tea feed but I think the rain washed most of it away! Beets,chard and carrots have been incredibly slow growing and I don't think I'm going to get a tomato glut this year!!

It will be interesting to see what the top performers will be in August after they've all settled after our current heat wave.

How are your veggies faring?

Root Veg from the Container Garden

I've been spring cleaning all my containers in readiness for a house move to Birmingham.  Today it was time to empty the roots containers and harvest the contents - beetroots, parsnips and carrots.

When I pulled the roots out, there were interesting results.  I probably planted the same quantity of all three but most of the harvest were beetroots.  I had a few parsnips although all the parsnips had good sized roots and only one carrot.

They were growing in containers about 30 cm deep by 90 cm long and there were two pots. 

All the roots were grown in spent compost that was home to tomatoes the previous year with a little scattering of wormery compost right at the base as a motivator for the roots to seek nutrients. 

I thought that the spent compost would be sufficiently poor for the roots, but maybe it was not poor enough. 

It was probably OK for the parsnips and the carrots as the parsnips formed great roots, but maybe not the right conditions for the beetroot. 

The beetroots didn't form nice, round beets.  Perhaps the soil was still too rich for them?  Another possibility is a lot of the beetroots were long, like carrots so perhaps that little bit of wormery compost treat at the base of the pots has encouraged them to seek the nutrients! 

It is looking likely that I will be growing in open ground next season so many more comparisons between the two styles of gardening to follow I'm sure! 

Towards the end of last season, I was trying to form a list of crops I found easy to grow in containers and to concentrate on these in the future and crops that don't grow so well in containers to grow them in open ground in the community gardens I support with growing advice.  Roots were on the list of things not to grow in containers as although they are not much effort, unless you count watering - I don't think there is such a high yield from them.

On a happy note for roots grown in containers, all the roots above provided me with my evening meal this evening.  I steamed the beetroot tops and roasted the roots and they were delicious!  I think the worms in the wormery will also be really happy to eat the trimmings from these organically grown veg too!

Do you grow roots in containers?  Do find them a success or a struggle?