It is hard to guess which plants will do well in any given year. For example, our apple tree has had a good year, despite the long dry spells, and hasn’t seen a reoccurrence of the scale insect that plagued it last year. Meanwhile, at the allotment, my attempt to grow swede seems to have pretty much failed despite regular watering but the reduced price, end-of-season kale we picked up from B&Q (complete with free caterpillar eggs, which I did my best to rub off) is thriving and we’ve had the first of what will hopefully be quite a few harvests today.

With gardening, the rule seem to be to grow lots of things, to rejoice over those that do well and not to lose too much sleep over the ones that struggle.