In what we hope will turn into a regular blog (we promise to twist his arm gently!), the founder of GardenSkill, Brooke Davis, himself a keen grower, looks back on the trials and tribulations of his gardening year. In his first post, he recalls the challenges of a particularly wet spring… 
 

Spring 2024 - Early Disasters 

It has been a very strange gardening year!  
 
It seems things started as they meant to go on, with a particularly wet and cold Spring, which played havoc with my early planting. Almost all the seeds I sowed failed. Lettuce, carrots, beetroot, spring onions, dwarf beans, spinach – everything either rotted or dove south towards Australia. I ended up with just two carrots and three spinach plants that actually peeked above ground! 
 
In general, everything has been so much later in 2024 than previous years. It’s not just the cold, wet start, but also the sense that we never got more than three or four hot sunny days strung together throughout the whole Summer. 

Second Batch Planting - Success At Last! 

If at first you don’t succeed…  
 
After waiting a few weeks to allow the soil to dry out and warm up further, the second batch of planting at the end of March fared better. I had success with lettuce, spring onions and potatoes. The lettuce in particular cropped well and I managed to get great continuity throughout the season. 
 
I have to confess that continuity is a weakness of mine. It’s a bit like timing the Sunday roast! The best laid plans can go to waste without good planning. However, I’m getting better. Coriander for example. I’ve learnt to sow a couple of pots every two weeks or so. Result – we’ve been picking for months and I’ve more in the pipeline. 

The GardenSkill Garden Plot 

At this point it's probably worth a quick word about my growing patch, just to give an idea of the conditions and challenges we face. 
 
The house itself is old - 18th Century - and like a lot of old houses it comes with a garden that is not a regular shape, and which narrows quite abruptly. Almost all the lanes round here have “sand” in the name, which tells you the soil conditions – except we are just inside a clay boundary, meaning our soil has seen a lot of hard improvement (and aching limbs) over the years.  
 
As a result of shape and soil, I tend to do a lot of growing in raised beds of varying sizes, and while I also plant in open ground, it's more of a struggle to work the earth. Honestly, the results are also a little less consistent, at least for me. Still, like all gardeners we persevere. And there's always next year. 
 
Anyway, back to things... 

March Planting - Failures and Lessons Learnt 

Despite some successes, there were also some unexpected failures, particularly compared with previous years. As I said, it's been a strange year! 
 
Carrots  
These were consistently bad. To the point that I’m thinking twice about planting next year. I have almost never been successful with carrots. Perhaps I could do with some of that nearby sand. Other answers on a postcard please!!! 
 
Beetroot 
My beetroot germinated very erratically and bolted at random. And this is after previously successful years. I was good with consistent watering, but I probably over-crowded the raised beds. I’m sure I didn’t plant the beetroot too close together. But two of my successes this year – runner beans and courgettes – undoubtedly crowded and overshadowed them. Easy to rectify for next year. 
 
Dwarf French Beans 
Some extremely small critters decided that I’d planted the dwarf French beans exclusively for their delectation and nearly all the leaves turned to fine lace, which didn’t do much for the crop. Lesson? I need to time the protection of the young plants better. Obviously, you need pollenating insects to have access as soon as the flowers appear, but the judicious use of some Gardenskill insect net early on would have prevented the damage and resulted in far more beans. 
 
Onions 
By far the biggest disappointment was the onion crop. I planted a mix of reds, browns and sweet whites. Only the reds made any real progress, with the other two hardly growing at all. After many successful years growing onions, this was a shock. Most were planted in open ground, and these fared worst. 
 
By contrast, I planted most of the red onions in GardenSkill double height raised beds, which did quite well. Why the difference? Both the open ground and the raised beds were given the standard Autumn treatment of a good layer of well-rotted farmyard manure. However, the clay that we are sitting on means that our open ground still tends to be alkaline despite all our soil improvement over the years. It’s much easier to control the PH levels in the raised beds to suit the crops. My best guess is that this made the difference to end results. 
Anyway, enough about the failures. Next time I'll focus on the successes, as well as how we plan for our spring and summer garden shows. See you all soon! 
 
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