What to Learn from a Tough Growing Year: Overcoming Gardening Challenges

What can you learn in years when things don't grow anywhere near as well as you hope?

If you've gardened for a while, you'll know that it's part and parcel of growing that some things generally grow better than others - and a few disasters each year aren't uncommon! But some of us also experience occasional years when loads seem to go badly wrong. I've had one before and another one this year. When this happens, it's easy to lose confidence or to question whether gardening is worth the time and effort. 

If you've had a bad year, too, I hope that by sharing my trials and tribulations, you will be reassured that you are not alone. At the same time, I've learnt so much from this community over the years - so if you've any learning from this year (about similar or different issues), I always value hearing from you in the comments. 

A Look Back at My Worst Year, 2012

I've been trying to grow as much food as I can in containers at home since 2009 - first on a balcony in London, and, since 2012, in various concrete yards in Newcastle upon Tyne.

2012 was my worst growing year so far. That year, we had just moved to a rental home in Newcastle with almost no direct sunlight in the backyard. It rained and was overcast for weeks. Then in June we had the infamous 'Toon Monsoon', when a month's worth of rain fell in just two hours. My containers became small lakes, literally overflowing with water. I nearly gave up.

Fortunately, the following year we moved to another rental property with a backyard that got a few hours sun (hurrah!), and the weather improved. But I had learned how the climate - and also the aspect of a growing space - can conspire to make growing extremely challenging. I also learnt that, if you have the occasional terrible year, it's usually worth persevering. 

2024 - another challenging year of weather.... and wildlife

2024 has been a challenging growing year for many of us - and for me, the worst since 2012. 

Looking on the bright side first, I did try to grow a lot of different things, and some still grew pretty well. We've eaten home grown salad nearly every day and picked enough herbs to make a real difference to our meals. But the weather - and the wildlife - has  also been challenging and often frustrating. And we've picked significantly less than usual. 

What has made 2024 so difficult so far? Three things contributed: 

1. Seemingly endless rain and overcast conditions in late spring and early summer. 
2. Changing behaviour of local wildlife :). 
3. Inconsistent compost quality

I'll now share a little more about each one and how I am learning and trying to adapt my growing as a result.

1. Endless rain, wind and overcast conditions

The season started quite well. April and the first half of May were bright with some sun and most plants got off to a good start. I reorganised my front yard container garden, built some new growing ladders, and was all prepared for a bumper growing year (I even started weighing my harvests to highlight my success!).

But then came June. June is a critical month for plant growth here in Northern England: longer days enable plants to catch up and put on good growth after the typically cool start.  But this year June was bleak and windy, overcast and rainy nearly every day.  The usual catch-up growth was severely hampered. The climbing runner and French beans hated the strong winds and grew poorly. The tomatoes grew OK but were only interested in producing green tomatoes. And the courgettes / zucchini just sulked. 

Leafy veg like these lettuces (sown in succession) did well, while the runner beans
and courgette / zucchini (behind) grew ok but fruited poorly. 

Most of July was poor, too, and while things did get better in August, not enough to make a huge difference. Normally we are picking tomatoes in late July or early August, but this year we hardly had any until September. Hopes for plenty of warm, balmy weather in September to make up for the summer failed to materialise - and we narrowly avoided a frost in the first half of September - by far the earliest since I've lived here. (Our allotment, 500 yards down the road was hit, wiping out all the courgettes and squash). 

What to do differently next year?

The unpredictability of the weather makes it a tricky adversary. Will it be a year of heat waves, floods, strong winds or a mix all three? We never know, so all we an do is to try to plan for a range of possibilities. With this in mind, next year I will:

i) Continue to grow a wide variety of different plants, on the basis that some will usually do better than others. Leafy vegetables like lettuces, chard, kale and sorrel like the cooler years, while the sub-tropical vegetables like tomatoes, French beans and courgettes / zucchini need warmth. I've been encouraged to discover that a few good container crops - notably perennial herbs like mint, sage, rosemary and chives - seem to do OK in almost any weather here in the UK. So these are musts every year. I'll try to be more thoughtful and strategic about the choice of what I grow next year. For example, perhaps reducing the number of warm weather crops to mitigate the risk of another cool summer (which seems a bit ironic given the heat waves in other parts of Europe and the world).

ii) Grow plenty of fast growing crops like rocket / arugula and microgreens like pea shoots. As well as growing well in a variety of weather conditions, these crops also grow very quickly. So, if one sowing is damaged by poor weather, they can be sown again and will be producing leaves for the kitchen in just a few weeks. 

iii) Stagger sowings of the warm loving crops so that if an early sowing is pulverised by wind or frost, a later sowing might fare better. This year, for example, the traditional late April and early May sowings of runner and French beans didn't grow well. But a second batch sown at the end of June did much better - and I'm still picking some today. 

While the challenge here in many parts of the UK has been wet and windy conditions, gardeners in other parts of the world are facing other, often more extreme conditions. As Joe Lamp in USA, who I follow, recently wrote "I'd had a tough season battling pests like pickle worms and dealing with the hottest, driest summer I can remember."

2.  Wildlife: Pesky pigeons, sparrows and rascal rats

I'm happy to share a few of my lettuce leaves with molluscs and a few berries with the local blackbirds.  It's one way urban growing can contribute to the wider ecosystem. But it's very demotivating if whole crops are wiped out, dug up or trampled over by wildlife. 

Pigeons and Sparrows

Pigeons have visited my garden for years. But, until this year, they have always ignored the raspberries and blackberries. For some unknown reason (shortage of food in the wild?) everything changed this year. Overnight, they stripped my raspberry plants of fruit, snapping some of the canes in the process, and ate a good number of blackberries, too.  Our raspberry harvest (normally very reliable) was reduced to almost nil.  (Interestingly, my kale plants, which pigeons traditionally love, remain untouched). Meanwhile, the sparrows increased their enthusiasm for nibbling the pea and lettuce leaves.

The most effective way to protect fruit from birds is netting. The trouble with netting in container gardening is a) it's time consuming and tricky to put up effectively over a container; b) it's a bit of a palaver to remove it to pick the fruit and c) it looks ugly. (While the aesthetics don't matter on say an allotment, they are more significant in a visible space at home, particularly one in full public view.) So all in all, while I do occasionally use netting, I prefer to avoid it if I can. 

What to do differently about birds next year?

If I want to continue growing soft fruit at home, I've realised that I will reluctantly have to use netting. To make this easier, I will:

1. Grow just one pot of raspberries instead of two;
2. Be extra vigilant and net the raspberries before they ripen
3. Look into different, easier ways to net containers (any suggestions?). 
4. Grow more fruit that pigeons don't like! 

Rats

One inescapable fact about living in urban areas (or, in truth, almost anywhere) is that a family of rats is seldom far away. Prior to this year I've been lucky to only rarely encounter a rat when growing. That said, there was one alarming moment when one leapt out of one of my wormeries. (This taught me to be vigilant about maintaining rat proof wormeries). 

But, over the last couple of years, there's been a visible explosion of the rat population in my area of Newcastle upon Tyne. There have even been national news reports about 'A plague of “massive” and “fearless” rats'.... 'taking over' my local park. More recently, they seem to have migrated from the park into in my more immediate neighbourhood. I'm not sure why this recent increase - I wonder if any other readers have experienced an upsurge, too? 

Like all wildlife, rats play an important role in the wider ecosystem, not least dispersing seeds and as a food source for carnivorous animals. But, as my son puts it, rats and humans living in close proximity are not really compatible.

Rats are highly intelligent, athletic and adaptable creatures. Combined with a highly evolved sense of smell (as good as - if not better than - dogs), they are, unfortunately for us, expert at finding things they like to eat in our container gardens. This year they dug up my only pot of potatoes, excavating and carrying off most of the contents. Each time I tried to grow pea or sunflower shoots they stole the seeds (until I started germinating them inside). And I found several half nibbled apples from my apple tree, dragged to quiet corners. 

Rats are also keen on burrowing, as I discovered when one tried to make a home by tunnelling under a tomato plant. It was probably attracted to this container because I'd added a layer of kitchen waste (potato peelings etc) under the compost. This technique, known as lasagne gardening or hügelkultur, releases nutrients for the plants as it breaks down. It works well in containers. Unfortunately the risk, as I discovered, is that rats can detect it, even under several inches of compost. 

Rats are super agile. I tried protecting my pea and sunflower shoots in this mini-greenhouse we found. We then watched as a rat leaped from the nearby storage box on to the top edge and then crawled under the wire mesh! After this, I had to germinate them on my windowsill inside. 

What to do differently about rats next year?

Obviously I hope that this year's spike in rat population is a blip not an ongoing trend. I also hope that the coming winter will naturally regulate their numbers... However...  I will plan on the basis that they will be back and so I will take the following steps: 

1. Top priority is to remove their favoured food sources. This is the key to avoid attracting rats in the first place. With this in mind, I will (reluctantly) stop adding kitchen waste to the bottom of my containers, stop growing potatoes at home, and continue to germinate pea and sunflower seeds out of their reach. I will also collect any windfall apples more often, and check that all my wormeries remain rat proof. 
2. I will regularly clean out and tidy any areas where rats can hide or nest. While this won't get rid of them, I'm told that disturbances discourages them. 
3. I will speak to my neighbours - who also grow food in their front yard - to see how we can work together on this.
4. I hope this will be sufficient, but, as a last resort, I will put down snap traps. I actually like and admire rats, but sadly an infestation is not compatible with growing food. 

3. Inconsistent Compost Quality

As a long-time user and advocate of peat-free compost (or potting mix as it is called in some other countries), I've noticed it has become increasingly inconsistent in the last year or two. This is most likely because the good people who make it are struggling to source the high quality, consistent ingredients they need to keep up with increasing demand. 

The problem with poor quality compost is that seeds don't germinate well, seedlings don't grow strongly, and larger plants don't grow with the vigour they should.  This can be very frustrating, wastes time and isn't always easy to rectify. 

In some ways, it is the variability between bags and batches that makes this a tricky challenge. Of the six bags I bought this year, two were superb, and I grew one of the best pots of basil in this. But then the next four were poor. The tomatoes I grew in this compost did significantly worse than some I grew in a batch of compost I have been reusing for six years! 

Left: tomatoes in six year old compost / potting mix; Right: tomatoes in new compost. 

What to do differently about compost next year?

In time, peat free compost will hopefully become more consistent and reliable again. In the meantime, I will try to experiment and learn to get better at managing its  variability. For 2025, I think I will:-

i) Buy the bulk of my compost supply for the year in one go - so that all the bags are from the same batch. I will then test a bag early in the season. If seedlings don't germinate well in it or if plants don't flourish at least I will be aware of the issue. I will then to try to adjust the compost accordingly. 

ii) I will trial adding 10 - 20% of my home made worm compost to some bags of new compost to see if this improves results. I will also try adding a little extra fertiliser to some as well. 

Looking Ahead

The challenges this year are a good reminder of how we need to continually learn and adapt.  And also to appreciate good growing weather when it comes!

If you have any other suggestions on how to manage rats, net fruit to keep off pigeons or cope with inconsistent compost / potting mix bags - of if you've had any other challenge this year that you'd like to get off your chest - I'd love to hear from you.