We've dubbed 2025 the ‘Year of the Aphid’ as data from our annual survey - in partnership with grow-your-own app Fryd - reveals climate extremes are making it harder for UK gardeners to grow the traditional vegetables their grandparents relied on.

Findings from our 2025 'How Did Your Veg Grow' survey shows hot, dry conditions fuelled a surge in pest outbreaks, crop bolting and poor harvests for some of our most familiar home-grown favourites. However, sun-loving veggies such as tomatoes and amaranth flourished.

According to the Met Office, 2025 was the UK’s warmest and sunniest year on record, with the second driest spring ever recorded. While slugs were largely absent, dry soils and high temperatures created ideal conditions for black bean aphids on broad beans and cabbage aphids on brassicas, and caused early bolting in crops like lettuce.

Dr Anton Rosenfeld, who leads our citizen science programme, said: "Some of our traditional British crops are struggling to cope with the extremes of seasons: an onslaught of slugs in wet years, and a plague of aphids or early bolting in dry years. Milder winters often mean that more slugs survive into the following year. Runner beans have faired consistently badly in hot seasons, with pods frequently failing to set.

“We will have to diversify our range of crops to cope, including more drought resistant leafy crops such as amaranth, and growing more perennial crops that have better ability to cope with drought and the challenges posed by pests."

He added: “As 2024 was year of the slug, 2025 was year of the aphid, with brassica crops being plastered in cabbage aphids in the early part of the season. As is common, aphids departed in early July and many crops recovered surprisingly well when the rains arrived."

Garden Organic’s best and worst performing crops of 2025

Our survey shows a clear split between crops that struggled under drought stress and those that thrived with warmth and careful management

•    Runner beans performed worst overall for the second time in recent dry years, with nearly half producing poor or no yields due to lack of water and poor pod set.
•    Lettuces bolted rapidly in summer heat, forcing gardeners to reply on rapid succession sowing.
•    Squashes avoided the slug damage seen in 2024 but performed unevenly. Well-established plants with reliable water did well but 40% produced poor or no yields with early powdery mildew, poor fruit set and stalled growth common in dry conditions.
•    Brassicas struggled early due to aphids, cabbage white butterflies and bolting but crops that survived recovered later in the season to deliver good autumn harvests.
•    Onions delivered mixed results. Growers using mulch or no-dig beds achieved good yields but many saw poor growth or undersized bulbs, often thanks to dry, compacted soil and limited watering.
•    Carrots also had a mixed year. Germination often failed in hot, dry soil but crops that established well, produced good harvests once rain returned, helped by low slug damage and a dearth of carrot fly.
•    Potatoes struggled in hot, dry soil with many gardeners reporting undersized spuds and scab, despite lower levels of blight and slug damage.
•    Tomatoes were the strongest performer, benefitting from the warmth and easier irrigation in pots and greenhouses.
•    Chard and amaranth showed resilience, with amaranth described by one grower as a ‘star crop’ during the heat. Amaranth is mostly grown in the UK for its tasty leaves which are a bit like spinach.

Some of the growers stressed even if they achieved good results, this was thanks to an array of adaptation measures such as mulching, good soil preparation through no-dig, using shade cloth and successional sowing.

Dr Anton Rosenfeld's organic ways to tackle aphids

Create a balanced, biodiverse garden rich in habitats. This will encourage creatures that feed on aphids such as birds, insects (such as earwigs), and their larvae, and bats. Blue tits, in particular, love aphid eggs. Grow sunflowers for seeds, provide a water source and create nesting sites in cavities or install bird boxes.
Grow flowers that attract hoverflies, lacewings and ladybirds such as anise hyssop, bird’s foot trefoil and phacelia (see Flowers and herbs to attract beneficial insects).
Avoid using too much nitrogen-rich fertiliser, which encourages soft leafy growth. This is attractive to aphids.
Inspect plants regularly and squash any aphids that are seen. Pick off heavily infested shoots and leaves and drop into a bucket of soapy water. A strong jet of water can also dislodge them.
Aphid populations usually come crashing down in early July so, even if your plants look awful in early summer, they frequently make a very good recovery if you can hold your nerve!

Our citizen science and surveys

For 65 years, we've brought gardeners together to share what works on their organic plots via its citizen science projects. The 2025 survey marked a step change in how Garden Organic collects data. By teaming up with Fryd, gardeners can now record crop performance directly on their phones as they grow, turning everyday observations into useful citizen science insights.

Florian Hassler, co-founder of Fryd said: “What gardeners experienced in 2025 is exactly why we need better, real-world data. Yet much of the advice gardeners are given hasn’t changed for decades.

“With Fryd, gardeners can record what’s actually happening in their own plots, in real time. When thousands of people do that together, we can start to build growing advice that reflects today’s climate not the one our grandparents gardened in.”

About Fryd
Fryd (pronounced Frood) is one of Europe’s most popular garden planning apps, helping over 300,000 gardeners plan, grow and share their veg patches. The digital garden companion allows users to create bespoke planting plans for their gardens or allotments, discover companion planting combinations, and get personalised sowing advice based on local climate and frost dates. Find out more here.

Read the full results from our 2025 'How Did Your Veg Grow' survey report here.