Best and Worst of My Garden - June 2012

dead potatoes, originally uploaded by Bumble Lush.

This month began and ended with a couple of bad events. The first "Worst" of my garden is the death of my potato patch. It pains me so much to write this. For the first few weeks the potatoes seemed to be doing well and growing strong. One afternoon, as we were tending the garden before heading off to my father-in-laws for a couple of nights, we noticed a few brown leaves on some of the plants. When we came back two days later, the entire patch was brown and dead, decimated by some beetle. I was frustrated, angry, sad, and felt bad for my husband who put so much time and effort into building me the box to grow them in. That was not a good way to start the month.


Mortgage Lifter, smacked around and almost knocked out of the pot


Carnival mix bell pepper plant, ripped in half and gone too young


Marglobe tomato stem, cut open and traumatized by the vicious storm

The next "Worst" is courtesy of the violent storm that blew through my area last night. The storm came through hard and fast with heavy rain and wind. When I woke up this morning, a few tomato and pepper plants had been knocked off a table and others were ripped in half. My Mortgage Lifter (top) was blown over, but thankfully, not broken. The pepper and Marglobe tomatoes didn't do as well. The tops were ripped off the pepper plants-- along with a lot of pepper buds!-- and the stem of my Marglobe tomatoes is cracked.

This isn't devastating though. Some people in my neighborhood lost trees, and there are others without power in our county. Thankfully nothing like that happened to us. I'll give up a few vegetable plants if it means no trees fall on us and we keep our electricity on a day that's supposed to get beyond 100 degrees.



As for the "Best" of my garden, there isn't a whole lot going on. Everything seems to be growing slowly, and the squirrels and birds are taking fruit and plant stems. We've managed to harvest some squash--about 2 1/2 pounds so far.


There's also the promise of good things to come. The vegetable plants that survived the storms are flowering, like these bean plants, and I hope July brings a good harvest.