When I was asked to compile a list of dates by which certain crops would be ready to harvest, I had to admit that this was no longer possible. Adverse weather conditions this year have really affected the rhythm of growth that we once took for granted.

Apples have ripened much earlier this year, and while the apple harvest has been generous, these fruits are far smaller than usual. My quince tree has failed to provide the fat aromatic fruits I have become accustomed to, forcing me to collect small wizened fruits that have fallen from the tree several weeks earlier than usual. Only a few remain on the tree.

A foraging expedition in the Cotswolds that I joined recently yielded an empty basket, for while the mushrooms we did find had gallantly pushed their way through the dry earth, many of them were inedible.

A visit to allotments in my village where sweetcorn usually flourish showed that this crop appears to have failed this year, as it has at two major Oxfordshire pick-your-owns that I visit regularly.

Home-grown tomatoes that usually ripen in the autumn sun are still green, such that that green tomato chutney is going to be the order of the day.

That said, the grain harvest, which suffered dreadfully during the drought earlier this year, appears to have come good, with some farmers reporting that it is almost as plentiful as last year.

Soft fruits such as late raspberries appear to be responding favourably to the lack of autumn sunshine; so are wild blackberries. And have you seen the size of the onions this year? They are gigantic, despite the arrival of a recent visitor to our shores, the allium leaf-mining fly which has devastated leek crops in my locality.

Les Britten, at Millets Farm shop and pick-your-own, who looks after the vegetables, said that the dry conditions had made things particularly difficult for him this year.

He told me: “Fresh produce requires a lot of water and Millets only have a limited supply of water, so once ours runs out we have to stop irrigating. Throughout a year like 2011 we have to ration water carefully.”

He went on to say that overall it has been a very cold year, which means that most crops have taken a lot longer to grow and ripen than in previous years.

For a large farm such as Millets another problem is coming into the mix. He explained that there was now a real shortage of qualified workers within the industry as most agricultural workers were now coming up for retirement. Apparently, finding labour within the industry is now incredibly hard.

The very cold winter also affected Millets’ strawberry crop and cool summer nights prevented them from ripening as they usually do. While Millets have had an influx of apples, most of them are far smaller than usual owing to the dry period.

These are the general findings, yet the strange thing about these crop failures is that they appear to fluctuate according to the area. Pumpkins at Worton Organic Gardens, near Cassington, for example, have failed this year, yet they flourish on allotments only a couple of miles away. The courgette crop has suffered dreadfully too, yet several local gardeners talk of it being a very good year generally, particularly for soft fruit and runner beans, which they say have never been better. Beetroot appear to have had a good year too.

Katie Napper, of Q Gardens, Milton Hill, confirms that the 2011 harvest was a very early one, with most crops being about two to three weeks ahead of where they should be. She said: “Both asparagus and strawberries were very early with good crops — the peak of the strawberries being well before Wimbledon. But this did leave us with a gap when it came to supplying our own strawberries when we would have normally been expected to do so.

“The cherries started early, too, choosing to ripen on June 12 rather than the traditional June 21 and finished exactly at the end of July. No August cherries this year — last year we had such a heavy harvest we picked them up to the end of August.”

Katie went on to say that there was a big crop of plums this year: “I usually describe the Victoria plums as the ‘back to school plum’, but not this year.”

Perhaps the best crop of all for Katie has been this year’s English pears, which are ready now, to eat and cook with. She says she has never had a better crop of pears.

Everyone I spoke to had something to say about the peculiarities of year’s crops and most admit it hasn’t been easy. I would, therefore like to raise a glass to all those gardeners, farmers and food producers who, despite everything have struggled against difficult odds brought in this year’s harvest.