Garden Woes
The prophet said to plant a garden . . . but I think if he would have seen ours, he might have reconsidered. This has been a rough gardening year. We managed to do the “impossible” – kill a zucchini plant. The trouble began with squash bugs. They were having a party in our garden boxes and taking their toll on our plants. We read up online to find a quick fix pesticide to wipe them out. No luck. Apparently they are pretty pesticide resistant. So, we had nightly search and destroy missions to crush the bugs and find their eggs before they could hatch. Our vigilance seemed to be paying off and it got to the point where we couldn’t find any bugs or egg clusters. Then we had a little sprinkling system disaster. The soaker hose to water our peach tree is on the same valve as the hoses in the garden. Little did we know that the peach tree hose had a huge leak. By the time we noticed that the water wasn’t getting to the garden, it was too late.
The zucchini wasn’t the only victim of our poor gardening skills this year. Our broccoli plants flowered and then got a serious aphid infestation; there are aspen sprouts growing up among our carrots; our pumpkin and watermelon plants never recovered from the squash bug/drought combo; and our cucumber plant is still only a foot and a half tall. On the bright side, we have managed to grow some fabulous tomatoes and just harvested our first cantaloupe last night. Mostly, we’ve decided that we should just grow fruit. Our strawberry plants are still green and beautiful, our grape vines are loaded with grapes that are starting to sweeten up, and our peach tree is doing wonderfully (probably thanks to all of the extra water).
One of these years we will be master gardeners. Right now, we are just looking forward to spring for a fresh start.
The good . . .
and the ugly.
5 comments:
Whatever. You guys are tops in my book because you actually know what squash bugs and aphids are and THEN take the time for nightly "kill and conquer" missions to save your plants. Faux gardeners?? I think not!
Hey, I want to plant a bunch of berries when we get in our new house. Would you do me the honor of becoming my berry consultant?
At least the dead plants have AWESOME planter boxes to sit in. You guys are totally amazing.
I'm sorry about your success, but the way you wrote it made me laugh. You just need to be low or no effort like me and then when stuff doesn't survive or do good, it's kind of like oh well, that's no surprise.
I'm so sorry...but it was funny to read about! Better luck next year.
And now the grape story adds to your garden woes....when it rains, it pours!
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