does anyone else have a gardening nemesis?

[colleysmill]

My gardening nemesis are carrots.

In 5 years of fairly successfully growing fruit and veg I have yet to grow a good carrot. Every year I think "this is the year" and every year ends in serious carrot failure. I know carrots are cheap to buy and hard to grow but its become a matter of principle.

Dh gave me that face as I merrily picked up another packet of carrot seed today whilst mumbling something along the lines of "not worth the hassle!" but I'm determined that one day I will manage a proper looking carrot.

Please tell me other people have gardening foes :)

Now carrots seem to be one of the only things that do well in my garden and I find them really easy to grow. It is south facing

I have a really deep (3ft) raised bed that is just full of just loose compost. At the end of march I maybe add abit more compost, sprinkle the seeds on loosely in rows, put a sprinkle of compost on the top. cover with a fleece sheet stretched over the top of the raised bed and put bricks on the corners then just leave them. I don't pinch any out, nothing, just leave.

Take the fleece off when the tops are too bushy and just leave......

I still have some carrots in from last year out there, that I will pick just before I plant the next lot in a few weeks.

But every time I want a carrot, I just go and pick one. Thats all I do. and Some of them are the fattist roundest, longest carrots you have ever seen. In some cases 1 carrot will feed 5 of us!

I can't grow broccoli, peas - I could for 2 years but now can't. onions, and other stufff - don't know where I'm going wrong.

Odd isn't it, I think the carrots like the loose compost and the south facing sunshine.

Spring onions (from seed, OK with ones bought as seedlings). Just can't get them to germinate, I think they need a very exact temperature. Also basil and coriander, they just grow sparse/leggy/run to seed quickly. I cannot seem to keep bay trees alive for more than a year or two either.

I use fly resistant carrot seed in tubs and raised beds, just eaten the last of last years. It's more expensive than regular seed though.

Onions from sets are fine, never tried from seed.

My landlord
Last year he popped round to jetwash the decking with his friend and then thought he would help me out by weeding my flowerbeds. The only problem was what he thought were weeds were the lupins, grandmas bonnets, wildflowers and other perrenials I had raised from seeds!

Glad to see I'm not alone.

I think my raised beds are too compacted - my cunning plan for this year was inspired by having watched a program called Allotment Wars and a chap was growing his prize carrots in long tubes so I'm ever hopeful!

I can't believe your landlord sailor I guess he thought he was being helpful!

My mother once weeded out a whole 2m row of rocket. She did say afterwards she was surprised that weeds were growing in such straight lines. If she is not supervised she will weed out anything she doesn't recognise, which is anything not common in a garden in 1960.

But supervised she is a demon edger, her edges are Chelsea Flower Show good. Not bad for 92.

Happy Mother's Day mum!

Snails. The slimy feckers eat everything.

Plant-wise: delphiniums, lupins and hollyhocks - and they're my favourites. My inability to grow them is probably linked to the minging molluscs.

Last years slugs, there were millions of the fuckers!

Particularly the black and orange fat ones, they creep me out even when I pick them up with gloves on.

And the ten inch green ones composed mostly of water.

I have never seen so many in my life as last year - literally over a thousand on my allotment in the season and the worst bit was the tiny patio outside my back door (really small, like 10 ft by 11 ft) where I picked up 96 in one night all heading for the chicken food bag.

I am dreading seeing what last year's snail invasion has bred into this year - am hoping the snow and seemingly long winter will have put paid to them. have already got my blue pellets out waiting for the fuckers. Last year, at my most deranged, I went out and just saxa'd about 100 of the slippery sods in the paddock before they could get to my beds (but that was long after the lupins, salvias, dicentras had been thoroughly mangled by them. I thought birds were meant to help out with them.

Snails weren't so much of a problem last year for me but my poor brassicas didn't survive the onslaught of the wood pigeons :(

This year though I have netting. Lots of netting

Irises. They hate me. Or maybe it's the soil. Anyway I've moved now so might try again

Basil. It hates me and my garden.

The lawn. It has been seeded. It has been turfed. It has been raked and fed and sprinklered. It has been scarifyed and pricked and had dustings of fine sand or fine compost or miraclegro. Nothing avails: it will not grow into a fine lawn.

tomatoes.

any sort of legume just fails and for some random reason i can't grow radishes! they are supposed to be the easiest thing that kids can start with but i can't get a radish no matter what i try!

I am the only person I know who can't grow mint. It's practically a weed and I cannot grow a healthy specimen

Things I have tried to grow a few times but they never ever worked - snake's head fritillaries (I'm sure they're meant to be easy!) and primula viallii.

Things I try NOT to grow but they keep appearing anyway and driving me nuts - Ivy (can't believe some people plant it deliberately!), rampant periwinkles, and a few other particularly annoying weeds I don't know the names of.

ROFL that someone can't grow mint
Mine is sage.

Basil won't grow outside in this country.

Fecking bindweed. And horsetail. And ground elder.

I seem to have all the worst weeds in the world growing in my garden.

Urgh.

Strawberries.

They cost about £10 each if you look at the amount of money spent to harvest

Yes to strawberries. Raspberries, however seem to keep fruiting forever!

I can't grow mint either.

Cats. They dig holes, crap and dig another hole to cover it up. Along with my raddiccio plants this am

OP have you tried paris market carrots. Good for crap soil.

the only year i grew good carrots on my 'sandy soil' (ideal apparently) was the year i didn't weed very much. carrot fly couldn't find em. they flourished. take heart. keep on, you'll get there.