When we first got married, I was so excited to buy a house and have a backyard just so we could have a garden. So we moved into our house in April 2006, and soon after, bought all the seeds we could think of planting...corn, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, squash, watermelon, you name it, we bought it. The problem is, we didn't really think about the space those plants would need... or the rocky Texas soil we would be planting in.
We sectioned off a small part of our backyard, tilled the earth a little, and planted the seeds WAY too close together. The watermelon was the funniest. It spread to like half the backyard. Most of the plants did pretty well, considering the bad soil and the lack of space. But that summer I was pregnant too, and when I am pregnant I am TIRED all the time, so I basically forgot about our little garden outside. Well, at the end of that summer, our garden looked more like a weed patch than anything else. We did get some vegetables, and a few tomatoes, but they were mostly buggy and we had to throw most of it away.
Well, we learned from that experience and decided to start slow this summer. We decided to focus on tomatoes. This time I was determined to NOT neglect them this year. We bought some good soil, and tomato cages, and weeded and watered faithfully. The plants were beautiful, and I thought for sure we would be feasting on some delicious tomatoes this year. There were a total of 10 plants just to be sure.
I guess I just don't have a green thumb, because guess what our total number of tomatoes is. 2 lousy tomatoes!! From 10 plants! And now it looks like they're dying. I don't have the heart to water them anymore, if they aren't even going to produce anything. Oh well, I give up. The bees didn't do their part this year. I didn't learn until way too late that you could pollinate the flowers yourself. Maybe we'll just have to try again next year.
4 comments:
Aw man. I hate that. Some years we have really amazing tomato harvests, then the next year...nothing. No rhyme or reason. Around here, you can send your soil to the USU extension to be tested so that they can tell you how lousy it is and what it needs. Or just pay the $$ for some good farmer's market produce. Lame.
Hey Beck, sorry to hear about the tomato problems... But, if it helps any, we have the same problem! Every year we have planted our vegetables diligently, but then it rains too much and the soil is bad and at the end of the year the plants look pretty pathetic. We're hoping this year will be different, however we have had only one week of a decent summer and its been rainy and cloudy all the rest of the time, so it's not looking good. We'll let you know how our tomatoes turn out!
We love ya!
we just did our first garden and its only ok. i can't invest my efforts, michael and the kids take care of it.
Two tomatoes is a great victory in my experience. We had a million little tomatoes growing. Everyone that walked past our patio drooled at how great our plants looked. But as soon as they started turning red, they got this rare fungus disease called rot bottom. They were perfect, beautiful and red looking except that they turned black on the bottom and were inedible. Oh well, someday I'll have the heart to try again. By the way, how did mom always have millions of perfect tomatoes, I don't remember it being that hard. But then again, mom made having 9 kids look easy too.
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