Geum Totally Tangerine - started flowering end of April, still going strong and looking lovely.
In fact, all the geums have done well this year; some of the smaller spring-flowering ones like Golden Joy and Moonlight Serenade are beginning to give a second flush.
Cuttings taken from penstemons, fuchsias, hydrangeas, perennial wallflowers and osteospermum, some as experiments and rooted in water - never had much success with cuttings before but this year almost everything has taken.
Verbena rigida - bought as v. bonariensis Lollipop to add to the few that survived last winter, think someone muddled up the plugs but they are lovely. Though since I thought I was getting Lollipop some are in the wrong place and will have to be moved...and replaced with Lollipop once I can take cuttings!
Cucumber Mini Munch in the greenhouse - best cucumber season I can remember!
Knautia macedonica - started flowering early and looked spectacular, and the bees loved it! Also counts as a bit of a failure though, since it went over by the end of June, loked really scruffy and got powdery mildew; some were removed, the rest cut back hard, now giving a small second flush.
Failures:
Tomatoes....all of them! Started off with nice sturdy home-grown plants, moved into bigger pots with a market-leading peat-free compost and....nothing. Just sat and sulked. Binned the lot.
Dwarf French and runner beans in troughs - not enough of a crop to justify the effort, and the snails managed to get in and devastate the plants anyway. Shan't bother again even though they taste better than shop-bought.
Hanging baskets and wall baskets - just haven't done much this year, which might be down to the aforesaid peat-free compost, even though I added swellgel and slow-release feed; ivy-leaved pelargoniums not very impressive, calibrachoa didn't really take off, the only thing that did was the trailing catmint....which stank!
Allium moly - OMG wish I'd known how invasive they are before I planted any! They were EVERYWHERE, spread right through the borders, swamping everything else and quickly looking tatty. Dug up as many as I could but suspect they will haunt me for years! Ditto allium neapolitanum....even more tatty-looking!
I spent some time this summer taking proper note of how much sun various parts of our modest garden got (finally....we've only been here seven years....) and it seems I greatly overestimated just how much sun some parts got, which would account for the limited growth of quite a few things! I have a tendency to buy things I like without properly thinking through the most suitable place for them.... So I've shuffled some around, have a few more to shuffle later in the year or next spring, and am hoping the plants will do better as a result!
Success. Sweetcorn. 2/3 cobs on each stem. Failure. Just been out and staked them upright. Blown over in the storm.
Success.Dahlias. Looking lovely. Failure. Just had to stake them after being decimated by the storm.
Success.Apples. Good crop. Thinned them so larger fruit. Failure. The storm has thinned them out even more. Hardly any left on the tree.
Success. Runner beans. Massive crop. Sharing them with all and sundry. Failure. All blown over with the storm. Not quite horizontal so fingers crossed undamaged stems will continue cropping.
Success. Dahlias. Daughter gave me a piece from one of hers. Lovely lavender tipped white. Failure.Two thick stems with lots of buds. Flattened by storm.
What a good job I thought to stake my larger brassica plants before the storm.
@KayJ that's such a shame about the alliums. I liked the look of neapolitanum. I did the same re: underestimating how much sun some areas got, particularly one border for which I'd planned lots of shade-loving plants but since seeing it during the day more often since lockdown I have actually put in sun-loving, drought tolerant plants which have thrived. What kind of soil are your geums in?
@Joyce Goldenlily ouch - sympathies. My dahlias survived the slugs only to be taken down by the storms. I thought I'd staked sufficiently but the high winds have shone a spotlight on my plant support installation skills which are clearly lacking. I hadn't thought that sweetcorn would succumb. Out of interest what kind of soil are you growing them in? And aspect? Sweetcorn is one thing I would definitely like to try properly next year - we eat a lot of it.
@Camelliad we're on clay, rock hard in summer and claggy wet in winter, still trying to improve it with well-rotted manure but it's a long slog. The geums seem to thrive though!
I'll be glad to see the back of these winds though....found the top broken outof a caryopteris this morning, and all the verbena bonariensis is velcroed together in a tangled mass!
Failure - underestimated Mother Nature completely. At various times too much sun, heavy rain, strong winds and a variety of pests have wreaked havoc. Forearmed is forewarned in 2021.
Failure: I keep leaving out buckets for rainwater, or a bag of compost, dotted around the grass, and forget to move it till the grass below is either yellow and dying or full of ants.
Failure: my lavatera need more support here. One stake each wa snot enough. They bounced back from earlier storms, but...
Failure: wait to buy hedging plants till autumn next time.
Failure: don't leave cornflower seedlings outside without slug protection.
My soil is very thin, gritty almost waste product of the clay mining era. When I moved here I did some soil tests and there were no nutrients, minerals etc. in the soil. No worms either. I have slowly added home made compost and slow release fertilizers over the years but last year bought some sacks of manure from the Young Farmers when they did their annual Dung run for charity. That has really made a difference. I have used tatty old floor boards around the edge of the veg.area as the topsoil is only about 1 spades depth. I had a load of top soil brought in when I moved here which turned out to be clay field soil which has it advantage but it is full of rape seed seeds which will grow to 8ft if left to their own devices and produce millions of seed. The sweet corn is growing in a mix of the clay and grit plus a liberal dose of farm yard manure. I have grown sweet corn each year as they are grown commercially down here in Cornwall. I think they , must like the climate. Mild, wet, warm summers.Peas also like growing here, something I have struggled with before.
Failure - Taking on FAR too much, I sowed well over 50 different types of seeds, mainly perennials, so my growing season has just been endless amounts of pricking out, potting on, and trying to keep everything watered, as you can imagine! This Spring was far too hot for a lazy gardener like me.
Success? I'm not sure I've had much of that in the garden this year honestly. Suppose managing to keep everything alive is a success, right?
(yes this is a real list - this is just related to our 2 allotments, I am keeping the garden out of it!) If I would sum this year up for us it was hard work mainly with the one offs and you would have to be mad to have this much going on...
Successes: (Me and my GF) Taking on a (second) allotment plot. Aubergines (so far!) doing well, small black fruits. Good cherries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, blackberries, rasps, tayberries fantastic. Damsons and blackberries good, made a good jam!
50 Tomato plants huge quantities of all sorts of tomatoes first crop early july. Dug and filled new wildlife pond, seeded wild grass area around new pond and back of greenhouse, renovated big shed in new plot (very hard work!) hung up hammock in new plot for fun lounging times! Sweet peppers, jalapeno peppers really good crop.
Red and white potatoes good crops, garlic very good will hopefully last until next years is ready. First hops on new hops plants. First spring and summer flower bulbs came out this year including some nice deep red tulips and fritilary which I managed to cut off with a strimmer. Decent strawberries, First full year of rhubarb plants x 3 really growing well now.
Kohl Rabi a success, had the first lot last week. Celeriac bulbing and fennel looking healthy. New wildlife hedge planted and most bushes did ok despite the mixed weather. Jerusalem artichokes 6 feet tall so I guess they are ok... Chard, cavolo nero cropping nicely, sprouts and leeks looking good so far ready for harvesting in the coming months. Squash looking good so far.
Courgettes ok although one plant destroyed, french beans really good crop. Cucumbers good, made a nice jarred pickle with star anise and turmeric! Plenty of herbs, too many to list including good basil crops. Allotment composting system went really well and got lots of compost to improve the ground. Installed 1100 litre water tank and setting it up to greenhouse guttering. Installed 160 litre water tank and setting it up to shed guttering. Getting a freebie new greenhouse, dismantling it and re-installing in the plot.
Elderflowers from the hedge = good cordial. Really happy with the wildlife meadow area in the old plot, it's now established and home to many frogs together with the 2 year old pond. Our (free 2 years ago care of GW offer) lavender did really well apart from losing a few plants so the lavender hedge was looking good. Cut down some large trees and now have some drying wood in our home made wood stores which is ready for an autumn bbq... becoming generally much better at using and preserving what we have when it is ready so that we don't have a waste...
Failures (don't worry there were plenty of things that went wrong as well) very hard work getting second plot up to scratch with unforeseen problems, Finding a serious horsetail problem in the new plot.... plus no ecosystem / wildlife in plot as it had just been chemicals used so little wildlife hence some pests and diseases.
Okra did poorly, few flowers and fewer fruits. Melons did poorly. Various heritage mints did poorly, hardly grew. Lettuce non existent. Spinach all got eaten as soon as planted. Sunflowers, from many that were planted we only had one that grew and flowered. Many indoor early planted seeds in Feb / Mar never germinated, maybe too cold.
Given some soil that nothing grew in so a long wait and waste for small seedlings that withered away into nothing. Habanero peppers did very poorly, mostly eaten or fallen off the plant. Spring onions, mizuma and some other salad leaves never grew, maybe the weird weather.
Large mature grapevine in shed in new plot looks mildewy and poorly. Petty disputes with a neighboring plot around various things... things being stolen from new plot. Lots of things going wrong with shed renovation and shed guttering systems, having to redo things many times. Had a few peas but not great considering how many plants we planted.
Posts
Failure. Just been out and staked them upright. Blown over in the storm.
Success.Dahlias. Looking lovely.
Failure. Just had to stake them after being decimated by the storm.
Success.Apples. Good crop. Thinned them so larger fruit.
Failure. The storm has thinned them out even more. Hardly any left on the tree.
Success. Runner beans. Massive crop. Sharing them with all and sundry.
Failure. All blown over with the storm. Not quite horizontal so fingers crossed undamaged stems will continue cropping.
Success. Dahlias. Daughter gave me a piece from one of hers. Lovely lavender tipped white.
Failure.Two thick stems with lots of buds. Flattened by storm.
What a good job I thought to stake my larger brassica plants before the storm.
Failure: my lavatera need more support here. One stake each wa snot enough. They bounced back from earlier storms, but...
Failure: wait to buy hedging plants till autumn next time.
Failure: don't leave cornflower seedlings outside without slug protection.
I could go on...
I had a load of top soil brought in when I moved here which turned out to be clay field soil which has it advantage but it is full of rape seed seeds which will grow to 8ft if left to their own devices and produce millions of seed.
The sweet corn is growing in a mix of the clay and grit plus a liberal dose of farm yard manure. I have grown sweet corn each year as they are grown commercially down here in Cornwall. I think they , must like the climate. Mild, wet, warm summers.Peas also like growing here, something I have struggled with before.
Success? I'm not sure I've had much of that in the garden this year honestly. Suppose managing to keep everything alive is a success, right?