See What Had Happen Was…

Gardening = MAJOR FAIL!

You all remember my post about my green thumb? Well, from the picture you know that went out the window without so much of whimper. Yep, my green thumb turn black, but not without justification.


I don’t know about where you live, but here we have reached record breaking temperatures. Our summer actually began in May instead of June. It has been on Hell here for months. Plus, we have not had the kind of rainfall we usually experience during what I call dog days of summer. This for an amateur gardener means watering my mini garden at least twice a day. That happened all but two days of the week and usually they would do fine. However, things started to go downhill when someone plucked my first, biggest and almost ready to ripen tomato off my plant. Don’t know who did it but they may as well have plucked my heart along with my first tomato. Someone had them a nice plate of fried green tomato at my expense. If you could have seen my face once I noticed it was gone, you would have felt my anguish. Hell, I worked hard to get the plant to produce and I wanted the bounty from my hard work. Let me move on because I feel my dark place coming.

So even with that disappointment I was determined to grow my tomatoes and continue with my harvest of basil, cilantro and mint. My basil was sweet smelling and delicious and my cilantro made my food muy caliente! I didn’t use the mint, but I loved smelling it every day. Now my tomatoes on the other hand started to give me problems. I found another of those damn worms on the plant and about beat that plant to its death trying to knock it off. Then I started spraying with a supposedly safe spray in order to protect the rest of the plant. However, as the days wore on and thinking I had won the battle; I realize I actually had lost the war. The damn worm was eating my buds, taking a bit at all my damn          tomatoes and living behind devastation. Well, me looking incredulous at what had happened to my tomatoes. The look on my face as I was watering and noticing every damn tomato had been bit out of was priceless. Needless to say that was the last time I watered that plant and I just let it die. While I was in Atlanta for the NBCC, the other four plants (I also was growing a cucumber plant), they died from not being watered. However, if you look closely at my basil plant some damn animal was eating it too. Ugh! I am glad I got to enjoy it for a little while though.

 I plan to try again next year, but I will start earlier with my planting like in March or early April. I plan to have the proper deterrents I place and ways to keep them watered when I am not around. Hopefully, I’ll get to really taste a tomato I actually grew. I hope whoever plucked my tomato enjoyed it!

*Hornworm picture from www.ces.ncsu.edu/.../blackhornworm.jpg taken by Sara Moize
All other pictures are from my personal collection.