Wierd weather - but how has it affected your crops?

In the UK we've had unseasonably warm, cold and wet weather so far this year. How has it affected the crops you've been growing? Is it all doom, or have some things flourished?

It is not quite all doom here. A few things have done well - not wishing to gloat, but I seem to be doing well with fruit - a good crop of strawberries, the blackcurrants look promising and my apple Charles Ross is fairly well loaded (but there is scope for something to go wrong still ...). I also have a fairly fine looking row of cos lettuce.

Other things have produced reduced or late yield; tomatoes a bit late (and a fair bit of blossom end rot); Pumpkins will have to get a move on to crop successfully. Broad beans were down on quantity, the hardneck garlic rather small. Drying beans also look unlikely to crop in time, unless we have a great autumn.

Others are a disaster - my fennel has come up, and just vanished ! The potatoes are waterlogged and look to have early blight. Outdoor tomatoes have already got blight too. My butternut squash are the most miserable, stunted, yellow plants I've ever seen.

All in all, a difficult year*.

* A French vigneron once told me that there is no such thing as a bad year, only good years and "difficult" years

To be honest, it is difficult to say what successes and failures have been down to the weather. The main thing I have noticed that is definitely weather related is how slow everything has been to get started. Really struggled with the french beans, even though they have never left the greenhouse. However, this year I also changed my compost from peat-based to New Horizons. It has been difficult to know whether to attribute poor germination to that or to the cold. I'm inclined to think the compost, as I use a heated propagator for many crops.

Despite the weather and the compost, and the devastating effects of foxes, slugs, snails and pigeons, I've had some notable successes. The biggest surprise is some very fine looking parsnip plants. My leeks (from seed swap) are also coming on well, but onion sets small and disappointing. Virtually no strawberries, but quite a nice raspberry crop, with humungeous canes for next year (that'll be all the rain, then!). Sugarsnap peas have been fantastic, from the plants remaining after the fox visited.

Overall, I think the weather has made it really difficult to get stuff going, but once it is going and big enough to hold its own, cropping hasn't been too bad.

I wonder if there's a slight regional difference too? Climbing French beans were slow to flower here but now are romping away. Runners have loved the cooler weather I think, but my broad beans (which were started early and were fine until it turned cold in the spring) were a disaster - only enough beans for two meals for two people!
Strawberries were rotten but tayberries were edible, although not many of them. I have high hopes of the autumn raspberries - so far there's little fruit in the freezer...except for rhubarb, which has grown amazingly this year; the best ever.
Like everyone else our tomatoes and squashes are very delayed and slow - I'm hoping that blight doesn't take over (though no signs yet - probably too cold here for blight!)

Runner beans have been very slow this year for us.