Good advice Kate. This will be my third year of growing veggies and I've made lots of mistakes, but I've had a lot of success as well. The first year I lost all my tomatoes to the dreaded blight, my dwarf french beans were covered in aphids, the brassicas were decimated by caterpillars and I stupidly sowed carrot's in modules and then transplanted them into the raised beds, they were the most peculiar shapes when harvested,lol, but still edible. So last year I only grew tomatoes inside my greenhouse which were a success, I planted marigolds in amongst the dwarf french beans and not an aphid in sight and my husband built a sort of fruit cage for the brassicas,we could not find any info on how tall sprouts or broccoli grew so he made it 90cm high, which turned out to be not tall enough and was lifted off the ground by the plants,lol. The carrots were still not great, I probably didn't thin them enough and although they were planted in trugs balanced on stacked up bricks to avoid the carrot fly they still managed to attack them (how high do they have to be?). This year I've bought the carrot seed tape and am planting them amongst the garlic and keeping my fingers crossed that this works, if not I'll try the resistant ones. My husband is going to extend the height of the brassica cage(can anyone tell me how tall they do grow?) I've also had great success with beetroot which I make into chutney, the sweetcorn was so much tastier than shop bought and the butternut squash not only stored well but tasted great, and I have just dug up the last of the leeks. Oh and the new potatoes that I grew in bags were both tasty and plentiful. As you can see I've learnt from my mistakes I'll also not be sowing all the seeds in the packet, last year I gave lots of plants away and this year I'm going to be succesionally sowing the lettuce so that they do not all mature at once. If I could pass on one piece of advice it would be not to give up as the rewards far outweigh the effort.
