And the Winner is.....

Now that we’ve had our half plot for 6 months, it’s time for reflection – winners & losers, ups & downs, what do we make of it all…..?

Overall Prize Winners – the crops!
Radish: hasn’t been eaten by anything (other than us!) – a few flea beetle nibbles on the leaves, but hardly anything.
Potatoes: pulling up some of the first earlies (rocket) has been so exciting – just like the bran tub at the school fair! Would like grow different ones next year to compare the taste
Carrots: first few finger sized ones just ready now – very sweet indeed!
Lettuce: growing the ‘mixed leaf’ sort gives good variety in salads. We had a real false start with the lettuce though, as we had old seed which came to nothing at all.
Spinach: I like this, you can certainly tell you’re eating a veg with spinach – it just tastes…well…green!
Turnip: you get an awful lot of ‘top’ for each root, and eaten raw they are rather peppery, but – boy – sliced and cooked for a few minutes they are suberb!

Runner Up Prize – the Potential crops!
Peas: flowering like mad, the plants have grown about a foot in a few days – I think that they’ve enjoyed the rain!
Broad Beans: they are so near ready it is untrue – pods about 3” long. I may have to have a few on Saturday. Broad bean tops are ok – but just taste ‘green’ but not really anything to write home about.

The ‘If I’d have known then….’ Prize
Planting distances: I have had a tendency to assume that I know better about these things than all the current gardening gurus, my fellow plotholders and generations of man all the way back to stone age hunter-gatherers, and have consequently been guilty of (1) sowing seed too thickly so we have a lot of wasted thinnings & (2) sowing too close together.

I can’t get a hoe between the onions so have to hand weed the chickweed which is a soul destroying job. I can’t get between the rows of potatoes to earth up so I have ‘field of potatoes’ rather than ‘ridged rows of potatoes’. Oh, and a label or two would have been useful

The ‘Touch Wood’ Prize
Baaaaaad bugs, and the lack thereof: besides prolific bean weevil attacks on the broad beans & peas, it doesn’t seem to have affected the plants, besides giving them a fetching frilly-leaved look. No slug damage to speak of, black fly on broad beans spotted & tender tops pinched out.

The Community Prize
For me, split between my fellow plotholders – characters each and every one, and the Grapevine gardening forum – whatever your comment/query/concern/news there’s always someone to reply/solve/commiserate or just chat with. Of course Wellie and Trousers deserve a special mention (see their aspiration garden in their blog) - I’m delighted to have come to know them not least because of their generosity of spirit, Wellie’s wicked sense of humour and a final mention for their lovely cat who could be a twin of one of mine.

Lifetime Achievement award
Mother Nature: this could all happen without us, but we couldn’t do any of it without the soil, the horse muck, the worms, the weather – take a titchy seed, watch it grow into a plant, eat the fruit 3 months later.

Don’t tell me that isn’t impressive.