Growing Your Own fruit and vegetables is easy

however I do think that the more experience you gain the easier it becomes.

Anyone can grow salad leaves in a pot or container and have a successful crop there for the picking.

However  I do believe  that there is an element of luck as well as knowledge that is involved in how successful your grow your own crops are.

Sometimes the weather can cause problems for the vegetables you are growing as well as for you.



The weather conditions play a huge part in the success of grow fruit and vegetables, so  taking into consideration the soil conditions, your location and then carefully selecting what you grow to fit those criteria and varying the varieties that you grow accordingly will improve the vegetables that you grow and their yields.However, the wild card will always be what the weather conditions are at certain points in the growing cycle. I have come to think that this is the challenge (and to begin with I thought the only challenge was  the weeds) there is a need to adapt to what the weather does and to make the best of the conditions that are 'thrown at you'.

Thinking about this has made me realise that one of the things that happens as you begin to learn more about growing your own fruit and veg. is that you learn the rules and then you learn when to 'bend' or adapt them to suit that season's challenges. For examples this year just when my onions and shallots needed a big burst of sunny weather we got the rain that we had desperately needed early in the year. Sigh. So the potatoes need extra watering as they were developing and growing, but the onions and shallots now need to be watched for signs of rot, if I have to I will harvest them before I normally would, as there is no hope at the present time of the sun ripening and drying them out. If they need to be dried off before storing I will put them on a rack in the shed instead of leaving them out in the open air as I normally would.  I have already harvested a few as I found one row was not looking too happy and although they are smaller than I would have liked them to be the flavour of the ones I have cooked with this week would have been hard to beat. Swings and roundabouts is the saying that comes to mind - "What you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts." I think the important thing is to use your commonsense and follow what fits the bill.