By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

The Wildlife Gardener can't sit still for long. Two turkey dinners, half a box of Thornton's Continental and a repeat of Jason and the Argonauts makes her desperate to get outside and work off those calories in the fresh air.

There's lots to do. It's almost exactly a year to the day that la famille Wildlife Gardener moved into the Wildlife Garden. Although it may not seem like it from the articles, a lot of hard work went into the vegetable patch. We tried to be self-sufficient, albeit on unfamiliar soil conditions. Vegetables probably got a disproportionately small mention because of the delightful fauna and creepy-crawlies (pond and otherwise) that continually distracted us from our toil. For every ten minutes spent watching newts, I would put in two hours of double digging. But you probably wouldn’t want to read an article about double digging.

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So I thought it about time I gave my veg a mention. What worked, what didn't work, and what we’ll try in 2008. Of course the weather was unpredictable this year. Hot and dry in the spring, perfect for early forcing of plants, then dismally wet and barely warm in summer, perfect for rotting things in the ground, spreading blight and breeding slugs.

Successes...

Broad beans: from HDRA were delicious, but at only 10 plants there weren’t enough of them and we forgot how much we liked them. Today I have planted 20 ‘Bunyards Exhibition’ and 20 ‘Aquadulce’ seeds in the newly-cleared greenhouse. More will be planted direct in spring. We must not be broad beanless again.

Peas: again from HDRA, and so delicious that I served them straight off the plant in their pods raw as a starter. Again, not enough, so we shall sow successionally this year.

Dwarf french beans: You know those little packs of green beans from Kenya you get for £1.25 in the supermarket? Every single dwarf bean plant will yield that amount of beans, and then some if you keep picking them. I grew the fine bean 'Ferrari' and we ate beans the whole summer long. I did remember to sow in succession, which helped, and nothing beats a buttery, squeaky home grown bean. Don't bother with the yellow ones, they didn't do a lot.

Runner beans: I made a bit of a mistake by planting these in the greenhouse too early so they were a bit leggy and vulnerable to the slugs when I finally put them outside. I'm also not convinced that growing them in toilet roll middles makes them robust. Perhaps there's some sort of chemical in the cardboard. I planted some runner beans straight into the ground alongside them and those grew beautifully. Of course all that rain yielded tons of succulent beans.
Anyway, I'll sow them in plastic pots in late May this year and see if that makes a difference.
Some flat yellow climbing beans from Italy were nice too, especially when sliced up with the green runners.

Basil, Parsley and Thyme: raised in the greenhouse, planted outside, loads of lovely aromatic flavours. Some later sowings attacked by slugs.

Leeks: module sown, one seed per module, a triumph!

Brassicas etc: all experiments that grew surprisingly well until the slugs ate them. More focus on cabbages, broccoli, cavolo nero, spinach and chards next year, as they seem to like our chalky soil, if not our gastropods. Jamie Oliver suggests cooking leaves picked from lots of different brassicas together. Yum.

Carrots, beetroot and parsnips: good carrots, some entertainingly-shaped, not much carrot fly damage.
Woody beetroot because the variety was a long-rooted rather than a globe one and I didn't realise that. I waited ages for lovely round beets to appear and when they didn't I eventually pulled up a tentacled beast that looked more like the mandrake from Harry Potter. However, the deep burgundy leaves were fantastic in salads, so I didn't really miss the roots. Parsnips were like octopi too – I started them in modules in the greenhouse (parsnip seed is notoriously slow and unreliable to germinate) which may have malformed the tap root. They tasted OK despite the misshape. I shall try sowing direct in 2008.

Courgettes: quite good but I'm now bored with the round ones that turn into glowering footballs overnight, so I'll just grow a few long green and yellow ones.

Tomatoes: I grew loads of tomato plants this year. Some succumbed to the weather, some to blossom end rot, and many to blight. But, by sheer weight of numbers, lots produced wonderful tomatoes:

No particular variety tasted any better than any other, but some looked zanier. I shall always grow tomatoes, and next year I’m going to try tomatillos.

Cucumbers: in the greenhouse, little six-inch cues ('Petita' F1) that were just like the ones I used to buy in Egypt – fragrant, delicious and kept fruiting until November!

And the Disasters...

Asparagus peas: no problem growing them, but probably the most boring vegetable in the world. It is possibly even more boring than its fruit equivalent, the persimmon. All frills, no flavour, a pretty flower. A vegetable for our size-zero, celebrity-fit-club-love-island-in-a-jungle-dancing-strictly era. Zzzzzz.

Squashes/pumpkins, various: They just gave up in the rain and died of lack of sun.

Potatoes: when not rotting in Somme-like soil conditions, lunch for wireworms and slugs.

Shallots: rotted in the ground. What's the point of shallots anyway?

Onions: Mr Wildlife Gardener painstakingly raised them from seed. They failed to grow much, but he still optimistically planted the tiny seedlings out. Unfortunately they were so tiny I didn’t see them and trod on them while clearing away the peas. Sets next year.

Ridge Cucumbers – outdoor: tiny spiky slugs that failed to grow. Was lulled into a false sense of summer by the spring heat and planted them out too early.

So, in the words of David Brent, 'What have we learned from this?'

• Don't grow anything you don't love eating
• Don't necessarily start plants off too early (especially beans and cucumbers)
• Don't plant outside too early
• Grow lots of different leaves for salad
• Whatever grew brilliantly this year won't necessarily do so next year, and vice versa
• Love your veg patch!