2022 - Plans and hopes.

....Reduce flowerpots stash- nobody needs this many.

Flowerpots are like beehive supers, you always have too many except when you don't have enough.

I need to grow more late summer/autumn flowering perennials. Everything seems to finish flowering around the middle of August, except for fuchsias and verbena bonariensis.

Perennial rudbeckia, heleniums, nepeta, asters, Bowle's mauve still going strong here. Gem marigolds and alyssum seem to flower forever too.

Grow fewer bush cherry tomatoes, 6 plants produced so much fruit we couldn't keep up.

Only grow greenhouse tomatoes to one stem, overcrowding is a recipe for mould.

Grow some blight resistant plum tomatoes outdoors as meals taste so much better with homegrown tomatoes instead of tinned.

Six compact chilli plants on a sunny windowsill provide more than enough fruit for a year. The only chillies in the greenhouse will be jalapenos, everything else will be sweet peppers.

Grow more garlic as we go through it so quickly.

Grow less kale and collards, more calabrese and kohlrabi.

Parsley and coriander in the ground, they go to seed too quickly in pots.

Plant tomatoes on the other side of the greenhouse so they don't cast so much shade.

Interplanting sweetcorn with squash works but the semi-bush squash got too tall and stopped the 2nd cobs on the sweetcorn from being pollinated.

Winter squash in containers, even 50 L ones, doesn't work very well.

I really like these - I think they're Rudbeckia. Picked up the plants at a charity plant sale. They've been flowering for weeks. Hoping to save seeds as I'm guessing its an annual. Will be growing more of these next year.

They're lovely. I've never been drawn to rudbeckia as I don't like the harsh yellow of the black-eyed Susan type, but having a goggle around, I see there are a lot now with reddish tones which are much more to my taste. Definitely one to try. I love Michaelmas daisies but they don't do well in my garden, it's either too hot and dry (front garden) or too damp and shady (back garden).

TMTT, I'm learning to love orange, so maybe some heleniums would be good to try.

There's a nice white aster called Aster divaricatus which does well in shade. Heleniums come in red too, we have one called Kupferzwerg.

A couple of things that spring to mind are:-

No more sowing tomatoes too early. I will just have to twiddle my fingers and wait until a sensible time when I can grow them on as strong plants not 'Drawn' plants that have been on the windowsill too long. They have come good in the end but are really late in catching up!

Some things I have found are better sown direct and others module sown. For me, I will sow French beans in modules as the direct sown ones were' hit and miss'. Calabrese was just the opposite, the year before the direct sown plants did really well whereas the module sown F1 plants were rubbish this year. Back to direct sowing next year.

I know I said a couple but another has just sprung to mind! My vegetatively produced leek plants overwintered in the greenhouse all went to seed. The previous year they were fine so it really depends how hard a winter we have? I haven't got growlights or a heated greenhouse so maybe I will just try again this year and see what happens. I usually pot up the leek 'grass' in October so will bring the leek head into the greenhouse soon.

My garden has several hibiscus/mallow type bushes and they're absolutely covered in beautiful flowers. I'd like some in the front garden too, so I'm gonna try taking cuttings. Any thoughts on how long they need to be to be viable cuttings? Or how short, perhaps?

I'm going to grow more french beans. I had some bush beans growing in a raised bed in front of my tomatoes and they were delicious so I'm definitely growing a lot more, maybe try some climbing ones too.

I'll try some winter squash too. I had summer squash which did very well, but hadn't thought about winter varieties.

I'm going to grow shallots and spring onions too. There were several times during the summer when I wanted some and didn't have any so it would be nice to pick my own throughout the season.

I had far too many tumbling toms (many bags frozen) so I'll grow less of those and try some sweet peppers in the large containers I used instead.

The dahlias will all be planted out in the garden instead of in containers. I've been a bit precious about them, but I want to reduce the number of plants I have in containers and just have a few tomatoes, peppers and herbs.

Not much change from this year.

Replacing Runner beans with all  Blauhilde beans instead.
Won't be growing aubergines ever again.
Grow only 2 cucs instead of 4

Grow a bit less lettuce 

I am also moving away from runner beans, much prefer French.
Leeks may also be off the menu, just for a year though

I've chopped down all the brown in the flower bed this morning and feel the need to move phlox, crocosmia, pinks and day lillies to better places so they're not so intermingled. I've resolved to sow beans, peas, courgettes and corn in two batches to extend the growing season. I've found several bags of 2 yr old shreddings/leaves which have formed lovely mulch which will go into the borders of gh2 when I remove the toms  to improve the soil.
There that's a start

As for what, or what not, to grow next year, the list changes with my mood.
Definitely no chillies! I've enough in the freezer to last a lifetime and greenfly were a pain in the proverbial. Probably not bothering with aubergines. Might give peppers another go but the yield doesn't warrant the bother, we eat so many I still have to buy loads.  Not growing quite so many varieties of beans, stick to  CFB Hunter, Fasold for early ones and one other probably  Lidls, perhaps with drying beans up elsewhere to plant and forget. Bijou MT and maybe some Sugar Bon or Oregon Sugar Pod. Stagger sowing of cucs and not grow so many. Try to convince P to let me have the old climbing frame for a tromba growing frame, at present it's at the top of the garden and he sits on the top of it in the sun to catch his breath and cool off after grass cutting. Might not succeed there
Try and put some thought into the flower border, at present it's very haphazard, but I'm useless at it, so might fail.