The gardening week (December - Week 3, 2024)

Happy Christmas and review of 2024

Review of 2024

This will be my last newsletter of 2024 because I will be taking a well earned break for a week over the Christmas/New Year period. As a result I thought it would be nice to focus this newsletter on a review of 2024.

This should be especially interesting for recent subscribers and there are a lot of you!

Not just gardening

It was my 60th birthday last year on Boxing Day and we had too many people around to fit in the house, so we converted the greenhouse into a dining room, it was lovely, especially at night with all of the garden lights twinkling! I don’t think we will be doing that again this year as we can all just about squeeze into the house, but it’s always an option.

After a busy year in 2023 Debbie and I decided to take it easy in 2024. Unfortunately things didn’t go quite to plan on several fronts. After a very wet winter, we were being driven to distraction by a leak at the back of the house that resulted in water dripping all along the kitchen wall and through kitchen light fitting, every time it rained. We’d tried everything to fix it, but none of the trades we consulted really had any good ideas of the cause and a few attempts at fixing it failed.

To cut a very long story short we decided the only way to be sure of a fix was to install a cavity tray, apply a specialist ‘paint’ coating to the render and replace the aging roof. All of these jobs needed doing sometimes in the next few years, but in the end they all got done this year, allowing us to re-use the scaffolding for everything. So far so good, we don’t have any leaks now, the house looks lovely all painted, with new soffits and fascia’s and we did end up with a new roof.

What made it a busy 2024 was that this relatively modest renovation, which was projected to take 3 weeks, actually took close to 4 months and Jordan, the friendly, helpful roofer, ended up challenging my patience. His workmanship was excellent, but he constantly over-committed and over-promised. As a result we never knew what was happening, we couldn’t plan anything, we were constantly having to re-arrange our lives. In the end we just gave up on trying to do anything away from the local area for the whole summer.

The only upside was that since the house and garden were a mess anyway, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity, and work through our someday list of house/garden jobs. We renovated the hall, kitchen and bathroom. Laid new floors and installed new doors in the hall, dining room and kitchen. Installed a new loft hatch and made a start on tidying up the loft. Installed air-conditioning in the south facing bedroom. Installed a projector in the living room. Oh, and laid a new path in the garden, leading to the greenhouse.

So in 2025 Debbie and I are really are planning to take it easy!

As I mentioned, I was planning on an easy year and it started out well, albeit a bit rainy, until early April when I rode through a puddle - did I mentioned the rain - which was hiding a huge pothole. The hole was about 12” deep and almost as wide as the road, My head hit the sharp edge of the tarmac.

I ended up with a mild concussion, sliced open the skin around my left eye, suffered eye trauma, crushed the trigeminal nerve and broke my eye socket and cheek bone in a couple of places and was fairly battered and bruised. Fortunately I was wearing a helmet, I felt very lucky.

Learning to smile again, after being banned from laughing while I healed

I had to take a couple of weeks off making videos as I could hardly talk due to the bruised jaw, but a couple of weeks later and I could almost smile!

I superficially recovered from the visible injuries within a month, but I was left with fatigue and severe, almost daily, headaches for nearly 6 months. This happened just a few weeks before the roof was due to be replaced and so I had to call in a builder friend (Tony) to help me with all of the render repairs and painting. In the end the delays of the roofing project meant I had to do most of the render related work myself as well as endless cleaning up to keep the newly painted walls clean. I diverted Tony to work on the inside of the house.

My makeshift shelter on the allotment, away from the noise at home

The noise from the endless building/roofing was hard to cope with, so I built myself a chillout area on the allotment and retreated there as much as possible. Cycling and hiking weren’t an option because of the headaches, but also because the roofers blocked the drive with a skip for months.

We eventually finished everything at the end of August and by then my headaches were subsiding. Summer was grim, but I’ve had a wonderful autumn and winter, so far. The weather’s been much better than last year, I’ve had a great time gardening and I’ve been gradually rebuilding my fitness, to the point where I’m essentially back where I started at the end of last year. I’ve also been enjoying learning about greenhouse gardening and although I’ve still a lot to learn, I’ve made good progress and it’s definitely been an exciting upgrade to the garden.

Gardening problems in 2024

There are problems in the garden every year, my approach is to try and secure abundance through diversity. I find that if I grow a few varieties of each type of veg, a few successions too and plant each in a different area, then something always works. Often everything works and so we enjoy sufficient abundance to also feed our kids families.

Here’s a quick rundown of the bigger, or more interesting issues that we had. I will resist explaining how I’m going to address these failures until next year:

1. I moved the early peppers into the greenhouse before they set fruit and I didn’t keep the greenhouse warm enough for them to set fruit. As a result the ‘early’ peppers were no earlier than the main-crops.

2. The kalettes in the kitchen garden got a fairly bad case of whitefly, which stunted their growth a little, but also meant that we weren’t able to harvest the leaves as we usually do. The actual kalette flower sprouts have been fine though, so it wasn’t a complete disaster

3. I’ve had clubroot on my plot for a few years, but it’s gradually been spreading. Somehow (probably on my feet) it’s also made it to the kitchen garden. In 2024 I planted assuming some areas were still clubroot free and that caught me out, resulting in a poor cabbage harvest.

4. Last year I grew my over-wintered brassicas in the polytunnel until winter, eventually moving them into the greenhouse for convenience. This year I left them in the greenhouse (enjoying the convenience) they got whitefly, I sprayed them for whitefly (which they didn’t like - being a bit small) and they also failed to thrive as the greenhouse is too shaded in late autumn. I’m still recovering from this chain of issues.

5. I got ahead of my usual planting plan for salad onions, because I feared that I’d lost a lot in the very harsh winter. In the end they all pulled through and so I was in perpetual abundance, always eating salad onions that were a little too big

6. My winter/spring carrots (sown in 2023) were badly attacked by slugs and it was too late to do anything by the time I uncovered them in late October. Slug eaten carrots are just about acceptable for cooking, but aren’t great in salads

7. The onions and shallots got onion fly, fortunately I checked and saw the problem before most of them had been damaged, so we recovered about 90% of the crop

8. The very cold early summer meant that almost none of the melons and few of the winter squash set fruit until late July, which meant no melons managed to ripen and our squash crop was about 2/3 of usual. Some of the melons also got mildew

What went right in 2024

Although there were definitely problems in 2024 and some good learning opportunities, it was actually a great gardening year overall. I put this down to having systems that mitigate many gardening challenges. Here are the highlights:

1. I grew a super early succession of French beans, strawberries, tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers in the greenhouse and all of these were great

2. The apricot and nectarine trees loved it in the greenhouse in late winter and early spring

3. I grew a late succession of Tumbler and Sungold tomatoes in the greenhouse and these both worked well, but the Sungold were the star of the show and we will be eating the last of those over Christmas

4. For the first time ever we didn’t have any significant shortages all year round and we only had a few gluts. This is important because each year I reduce the amount of space under cultivation

5. My new system for growing peppers and melons, using halos and strulch was a massive success (even though the melons didn’t have time to ripen). It dramatically reduced watering, weeding, slugs/snails and bed turnover time.

6. I’ve made good progress with learning how to make best use of a greenhouse all year round

7. I’ve loved my new seating area on the allotment and especially liked the vertical growing space that surrounds it

8. This newsletter has been a joy to write and a great success

A year in harvests

In the photos that follow I’m unable to show our full harvest table, so I choose to miss out the salad harvest, since that looks very similar from season to season. So in addition to the harvests show, just add on about 15 salad boxes in your mind:

A typical set of salad boxes from May to October, after which we don’t have cucumbers

Harvests of winter

I was pleased with the winter harvests this year, we were well fed and apart from the carrots the quality was high. The January harvest value easily covered our allotment rents and when we include all of winter, that covered our total costs for the year.

Spring harvests

What’s not so obvious, until you look at the harvest photos is that when you garden over winter, what you are really doing is preparing for an abundant spring. Most of these spring harvests happened at a time on our allotment site, when most others plot holders were harvesting very little.

Summer harvests

Great as the spring harvest is, it’s hard to compete with the abundance of fruits that arrive in the summer harvest. The real trick - when you don’t have much space - is to have an abundant spring harvest, that’s timed to ensure that it doesn’t interfere with the summer one and I think I achieved it:

Autumn harvests:

Autumn harvests are great too, a few things slow down, but so much is being stored away. I don’t show my bulk harvests in these weekly photos, because a single one would fill the harvest table. You can however see my “what’s in store” video:

Here’s the weekly delights of autumn, not too shabby, even if I do say so myself:

December harvests

Just to round out the year, here’s the Winter harvests so far in 2024, excluding the big Christmas harvest. I will have a video of that next week.

First harvests of 2024

One of the most satisfying aspects of the way that I garden is the availability of early fruit and veg. I try not to declare something as being harvested, until it’s being harvested every week from that point onwards. Here’s the most interesting few months of early harvests, up to the end of the ‘hungry gap’:

This is a long list now, so I’ve chopped it off, you can find the full list here.

Updates to my ebook and database

Over the rainy winter I made quite a few updates to my eBook and the associated database, here are the highlights:

1. I restructured the bulk of the book into two main sections

   1. The basic growing skills and techniques

   2. Advanced growing skills and techniques

2. I created guides for the 7 most common gardening scenarios, from growing in heated spaces, to unheated greenhouses and polytunnels, and growing outside with and without fleece

3. I was particularly pleased with new Greenhouse Design and Growing Guide because that’s where most of my learning has happened this year

Sowings for the week

All got my backlog of seeds finally sowed this week, lots to keep me interested over the Christmas and new year break! The onions are really a germination test, but if they look healthy in late Feb they might get planted out.

Here’s everything sown to date, in more detail.

Not germinated yet

Nothing

Germinated this week

Just the second succession of super-early peas, destined for the greenhouse in early January.

Pricked out

Nothing this week

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Just my new trees and a few cabbages! I now have 13 trees on my plot, 8 trees on Debbie’s and 10 in the kitchen garden, for a total of 31 fruit trees.

Here’s everything planted this year so far.

Waiting to be planted out

Nothing

You can see all of my planting details here, note the links to growing guides have been added.

Sowing’s for next week

Nothing, I’m finished until January now

Growing guides for December

This link takes you to all of my monthly guides, where you can find a lot more than just my sowing guides. I particularly like the list of videos produced in the relevant month in years gone by. Click here for December’s guides.

Because I’m always experimenting you might find me sowing a few things that are not on this list, but you can always look those up from the complete list of guides, which you can find here.

Sowing Guide for December

This guide to what I’m sowing in December is live for readers of this newsletter a day earlier. Don’t get too excited though, because there’s very little that I think it’s worth sowing and nothing without grow lights.

Here’s a link to the details.

Weekly Harvest

Harvest volumes are still respectable, but more importantly taste is great.

Useful links!

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

What I’ve planted to far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders