So this year, due to Baby Girl's interest in playing in the dirt and dawning interest on my part, I decided to try growin tomatoes this year. I had a couple of big pots that I thought would be the right size. I had been reading how easy tomatoes are for container gardening you see.
Well, that was such a bust! Maybe it was that my first tomato plant was a Cherokee Black (purple?) that maybe is a little more sensitive. Maybe my research was inadequate (as usual for this kind of stuff). Maybe my suspicions have been confirmed that I have a black thumb. Well, okay not that last one since the tomatoes were over at Dad's and he looked after them. I also had a cherry tomato plant (free) from a Girl Scout badge workshop Baby Girl went to. I figured I'd be sick of tomatoes before too much longer. Boy was I wrong. I got 3 tiny, tiny Cherokee Black tomatoes and only 2 cherry tomatoes and the cherry tomatoes just within the past couple of weeks!
Upon pulling up the sad, wilted Cherokee Black plant, Dad discovered that it was severely root bound! "Nuthin' but a big ball of roots! Not a bit of dirt." were the words from Dad. That explains that one. The cherry tomato plant that eventually started growing at an amazing rate, finally has only 2 or 3 tomatoes on it. I think it is suffering from a similar lack of dirt. It has been very disappointing. Unlike previous unsuccessful tries at growing though, I am determined this is a skill I can learn. Hubby knows bunches about gardening (though he won't admit it) so I am determined to pick his brain and make him help me next year!
Baby Girl also planted some pumpkin seeds in little newspaper pots at a day camp program she went to this year. I put them in the ginormous pot I had here at the house and they too started out amazingly. I was so excited! Unfortunately, I found out at the first really long rain that there was no drainage in that pot. So they got waterlogged. Hubby drilled some drainage holes (plastic pot) but it was a couple of days later and I think that was too late. There are still leaves that are a healthy color of green and are not wilted or anything, but the vine has not grown anymore since the waterlogging. No pumpkins either :(
I am so going to spend the winter months (you know that time that's after Christmas but before Valentine's Day?) reading everything I can get my hands on and aggravating the crap out of my mom (who grew up gardening) and Hubby (ditto) and anyone else I can get to stand still long enough as well as haunting the library (like I need to do more of that). Next year will be different!
As Bob as my witless, I will be a gardner! (I just love the Rugrats!)
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