My winners and losers of the 2019 vegetable season.
My surprising hit of 2019 in the vegetable area were the melons. This was the first year that I had tried melons and I was surprised at how easy they were to grow. The smell in the greenhouse when they were ripe and ready to be picked was sensational and I have already ordered my plug plants for 2020. The raspberries, also a first for me this year, were also a hit and they fruited over a long period of time. I’ll see how they go in 2020 and if they are another success then I will remove the strawberries and replace them with more raspberries.
The sweet peppers gave a good tasty crop. This time I had grown the long sweet peppers rather than the bell sweet peppers that I had grown in previous years and this proved to be much better for me in terms of the size of the crop. The tomatoes were, in general, tasty but I wasn’t that keen on the Tutti Frutti series of cherry, mandarin and grape tomatoes so I won’t be growing these again. The blueberries, now in their second year, also provided me with a good crop, once I had covered them to protect them from the blackbirds!
I had a good crop of broad beans, climbing beans, asparagus. The onions and garlic were much more successful than the previous year as I was able to keep on top of the watering this year. However, the red variety of onion that I grew hasn’t stored well. I will see how it goes for 2020, but I may not grow the red variety again.
The biggest failure of 2019 were the brassicas, a mix of brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli. They looked healthy up until October but it went down hill from there. The brussels sprouts never developed in size, and the broccoli and cauliflower had an insect infestation which no amount of spraying seemed to deal with. In the end I gave up and left them uncovered for the birds to feast themselves. I’m going to need to do some research to understand what went wrong and what I need to do differently for the 2020 season.
The dwarf patio cherry and pear trees didn’t bear any fruit this year, neither did my citrus plants. Something for me to investigate.
The peas grew extremely well, too well in fact, and they pulled over their support and broke a number of the stems. I have already purchased a stronger support system for them for 2020.
