Normality resumes

I started this blog to follow the trials of gardening in one of the colder, wetter parts of England. This year, however, saw a prolonged hot dry spell. It started for us in early May: unusually, my husband was gardening in his shirt while listening to how the cricket had been rained off elsewhere. It continued through to the end of July. We were facing a hosepipe ban in early August for the first time I can remember.
August, however, saw a return to cool damp conditions. So what happened in the interim?
Fortunately my husband spent a long time setting up drip watering systems for the vegetable patch, greenhouse and hanging baskets. All survived a holiday to Italy and, more importantly, a two week sojourn away during the hottest, driest part of the summer. We have had some of the best yields ever this year for some crops including from our apple tree which is bowed down under the weight of fruit. There are far too many for our jackdaws to scoff, which is usually what happens.

some apples are yet to be picked but we lost a lot to gravity

Particular successes have been the borlotti beans (which only provided sufficient beans for seed last year), runner beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, salad greens and spring onions. The peppers in the greenhouse are thriving, also.
Casualties include mature shrubs in pots which we didn't bother to water while we were away as it was bound to rain... This includes a potentilla and a hydrangea.
The good bortolli crop, however, got me thinking about self-sufficiency. Although it's a good crop (for us), it would be our only protein source for the winter, other than duck eggs. How would we manage if we were reliant only on what we can grow for fruit and veg?

Our dried borlotti beans in 1lb honey jars

I listed 37 veg I like. Of these we can only reliably grow 15. Celeriac, is a work in progress as we tried it for the first time last year. It was a complete failure, but this year looks much more hopeful. Some, such as white and red cabbage, we have never tried to grow. Some of my favourites, however, are either completely unreliable (peas and sweetcorn) or a lost cause (sweet potato, mushrooms and butternut squash).
Probably most worrying is we have never grown sufficient onions.
In terms of fruit, this would be even more restrictive. I dislike most of the things we can grow such as gooseberries, blackcurrants and blackberries. Our apple crop, even this good year, would never suffice: we're up to 6.5kg so far and a lot of those still on the tree have bird and wasp damage. We stand no hope of growing grapes, bananas and citrus fruit. We tried a grape vine and lemon trees in a southfacing covered area with no luck.

So, I'm keeping track of our yields. To date, some of these are estimates as I came to it late and we had already eaten some of our crops.
We would need to grow 250 kilos of F+V per year to feed my husband and me according to healthy eating principles, taking into account holidays and our weekly meal out. I have had problems finding numbers for typical yields for fruit and veg so it will be a useful exercise to see what we actually achieved.
How are we doing so far?

Spring onions did well this year. Seen here with chard and kale
in a mixed bed. The kale selfseeded.

We have cropped around 35.5 kilos plus 90 portions of salad veg (salad leaves, cucumber etc). 90 portions of food translates to 7.2 kg bringing the total weight so far to nearly 50 kg.
We are going to have to go some to hit 250 kg. We've got another 8 months to go, though.
Courgettes and runner beans have been our heaviest croppers and are still giving. French beans were very disappointing. Some veg have yet to start such as celeriac, leeks, parsnips and turnips.

I'll keep you posted.