So, my commitment to writing a blog at least once a month went well this year, ha!
Unlike my success in documenting our progress here, we've had a truly fabulous year for produce from our garden. It's been the first full year where I've grown in every bed, and from May until December, we didn't buy any vegetables from the shops at all - a huge achievement that I'm very proud of.
My freezer is still packed with delights to brighten up our daily meals - broad beans, kohl rabi, tomatoes and tomato sauce, onions, garlic, swede, sprout and bags and bags of herbs. I had frozen tonnes of carrots, too, but it seems like I need to grow double the amount to see us through winter, as our youngest is addicted and can't go a day without a hit of those and sweetcorn!
On the subject of sweetcorn, there's been a fair few failures along the way. Last year I absolutely smashed it with sweetcorn; this year, we didn't get a single cob. Rabbits ate the first lot, the second lot were eaten by rabbits too, and the third lot when in too late and were overshadowed by squashes, so that was the end of them.
We've had a massacre of brassica; the sprouts were seriously under attack at one point, even though I had them netted. Lesson learnt here – if the leaves are close to the netting, those blinking butterflies can still lay eggs on them!!! Within just a few days, my poor sprouts went from flourishing to languishing. Although another lesson learnt, I left a few of the least destroyed instead of ripping them all out. By some miracle, we managed to pick a decent load as they recovered – so never be too hasty to remove plants after damage; they may surprise you with their resilience.
Storm Eunice did a number on my greenhouse, a terrifying sight as we watched the wind whip through and blew out several windows and the door. The worst part was the shattered safety glass, then littered several raised beds and the gravel path. That was not a fun job to try and pick all of that out!! It also put me back when it came to sowing and shifting seedlings, as I obviously wasn't the only one affected, which meant there were long delays on replacement glass.
We had an abundance of squash this year; as I was trying out a few new ones, I grew a bunch of pumpkins straight on the muck heap, meaning the boys had great fun carving those for Halloween. In addition, we had bucket loads of peas, broad beans, giant yummy cauliflowers, tonnes of kohl rabi, the tomatoes were insanely good, loads of redcurrants, apples, pears, blackberries, strawberries, cabbages, broccoli, spuds, chillies, even managed to grow some aubergines for the very first time!
My cut flower beds were also a huge delight this year, and I intend to expand on those again next year. When the world is full of depressing news, there's something to be said about having freshly picked flowers in your home; I highly recommend it.
Anyway, I'll stop waffling; press play on the video to see everything we got up to 😊
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