Monday, April 22, 2013

EPIC FAIL!

I should be well into a lush, green growing garden right now but 
NOOOOOOOO! 
I am struggling to grow anything in my garden. 
It seems as if Mother Nature hates me.

It all started with these:
These are the tomato, eggplant, pepper, and herbs that I started from seed over nine weeks ago!  They should have already been hardened off and transplanted to the garden.  I have repeated the exact same process year after year but this year something is out of whack.  They either died or stopped growing all together...all of them!  
I would have blamed it on a poor batch of soil but then this happened:
That is a dead pepper plant!  
I'll admit it.  I caved and bought some pepper plants from the nursery because I was so discouraged with the failure of my seedlings.  I transplanted them into my raised beds and then noticed something (likely snails) had been munching on the leaves.  I dusted them with some food grade diatomaceous earth and about three days later they were dead.
  
Strike two against me!

I could have even bounced back from that until I saw this:
Those are some seriously jacked up bean plants.
I had to replant the whole lot of them due to a late freeze and then I dusted them with the DE because the snails seemed to love them too.  Most of them died and the few that are left are looking pretty sad.

I feel my green thumb turning brown by the minute.

So like any good gardener, I went to the nursery and bought myself a garden!
My favorite nursery on earth, Enchanted Forrest, had plenty of heirloom tomatoes.  So I brought some home and planted them up in some homemade earth boxes (check out YouTube!  LOTS of ways to make these and most of them under ten bucks!)
I really had my heart set on some of the heirlooms I started from seed, so I started all over again and planted more seeds.  Thankfully, we have a really long growing season here in Texas.  By the time my purchased plants are spent, these from seed should be producing.
Now barring any natural disasters or plagues (I'm not holding my breath!), I should be harvesting tomatoes well into October. 

The only thing I seem to be doing right is flowers.
I've never had much success as a flower gardener, but I've had some beautiful results so far this year. They make me happy while enduring my vegetable failures.

Gardening is never boring, that's for sure.
Every season is a new adventure! 


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have no idea what happened to the seedlings!!!! WOW! But,..your flower are BEAUTIFUL!!! Sarah