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Welcome to Garden Blogger's Death Day for the month of June, 2009! This is the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death. This is the day for gardeners like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, for cadmium-green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide, and for any poor soul whose plants fall victim to that fickle mother who controls us all - Mother Nature.
This has been an unusually death-ridden month for my garden. The recovery from the flooding has been impossible in the oppressive heat of this fun-filled Florida summer and I am left with one loan surviving vegetable - the okra. Embarrassingly, everything else is brown and overgrown with weeds.
I have three rogue okra plants who insist on giving me one vibrant green okra every other day. I have no earthly idea what to do with about one okra every two days, so they're going to waste. I'm treating the okra plants like gold since they're my lone survivors, even though I have no clue what to do with the okra they produce.
Everything else has gone belly-up. Roots in the air. Kaput.
Here is my oh-so-sad corn crop. Brown. Dead. This is especially disappointing since we have a huge corn farm not far from here that grows acres of Zellwood Sweet Corn in extremely sandy soil - just like mine.
Here are the bug-ridden, deformed, rotten and downright un-scrumptious ears of corn. The chickens quite liked them, but that's about it.
The tomatoes are brown sticks. And what's left of them has become overrun with weeds. On a bright note, I did have a pretty good tomato harvest before they bit the dust.
My bean plants washed away, leaving me with one lone dried-out bean pod clinging on to the teepee. I'm sad about the beans because this is twice now that I've lost my entire bean crop to flooding.
So how about all of you? What fell victim to your gardening wrath this month? Feel free to leave a comment explaining what you killed or maimed this month. If you have a blog leave a link to it so we can visit and check out post mortem photos too.
Remember, we're here for you. Let's not judge, but support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.
(And if you haven't done so yet, don't forget to enter to win a free garden gnome! The contest ends tonight at midnight and the winner will be announced tomorrow).
18 comments:
I planted beans "straight into the ground" along my fence border, thinking "brilliant - edible privacy!" Well, they grew about 2 feet and are all yellow now! And I went hunting last night to figure out what is defoliating my potatoes and made a horrifying discovery: my first tomato hornworm! It was like the campy horror movies I love so much, I jumped and screamed, it was huge and disgusting. I will probably post about that today with pics of the monster.
As for your corn, don't feel too bad. I tried to grow corn and it was pitiful. I read up on it afterwards and apparently you must grow rows, not "sq ft gardening" and need about 9 or more 12 ft rows in order to have really decent pollination and a good crop. That's one of those things I will leave to the local farmers and buy at the farm stand!
Death hasn't been too harsh on me this year. I think I've had more produce snatched out of my hands because of bolting than actual death. Our weirdly cold and wet weather is making some things not too happy. I did join in this month and you can see my post at Daphne's Dandelions.
I'm up with my dead. :)
Sad line up here too. I was going to join you this month, posted about the terrible weather instead. Some of my plants are bent but not dead yet!
I just ripped out my cucumbers. I should have thought to take that picture. :(
The beans I planted just never grew. Out of two full bags of seeds we got 5 miserable little plants. I never did figure out why, as I dug down to see if the beans even started to sprout, but the beans were gone! I think something ate them. *sigh* I love fresh snap beans too.
Joining you in mourning at
Annie's Kitchen Garden
I think we have all had our failures - my kale never did well. If it started to sprout the chickens stuck their heads in and snipped it off, or the bugs and some sort of worm-like thing ate them. Our peas and lettuce didn't do well with the early heat. I think it will be a challenging season for all of us!
So much death and destruction. At least you'll get some pretty blooms from the okra.
If you don't want to throw the okra away, you could try putting the pods in the freezer and collecting enough to go into some nice vegetable soup.
Kate, thank you for hosting GBDD. If it wasn't for all the flooding you experienced, GBDD may never have been born. Your photos are pretty impressive and make my one lone death photo look boring. Anyway, the death notice is up at Mamma Mia Days.
After viewing the pansies in the pots by my front door this morning I had to join you in mourning for our dear deceased plants. Please stop by for the visitation before my pansies are put to rest.
Sniff, sniff, my pathetic blueberry plant I have been carefully and patiently nursing this spring (after 2-3 years of no fruit and basically no growth) bit the dust in the past 10 days. I tried to amend the soil to make it more acidic and I thought I followed the instructions on the bag of elemental sulfur really, really closely and carefully, but the blueberry did not agree. It started turning brown within about 4 days, and it now completely brown and dead. So much for dreams of huge blueberry yields for my blueberry-loving 4 yr old...
I lied. I've got death. Possibly huge spontaneous death. I'm posting it now.
Well, I had the butternut squash earlier in the month, and also a zucchini plant. I need to remember to take pictures of the things that die, so I can join in the fun!
Hi all. I love your idea, Skills. My garden death was really a murder, and I did not mourn it one bit. A giant camphor laurel tree in my back neighbours yard right on the fenceline which they disposed of today while I was at work.
Hooray! A new big sunny spot for more veggie garden!
Don't worry about your corn. Even when I grew it and it was edible, it was still deformed.
This is a great idea. I'ts good to hear I'm not the only one with garden failures - sort of misery likes company. Lot's to learn here too. I'll be posting my latest disaster on Friday.
My butternut squash plants are near death. One is already dead. Im sad about this one since I love butternut squash :(
http://lo-motherearth.blogspot.com/2009/07/garden-week-4.html
this is a delightful idea! i was directed here by another blog I frequent and I can't wait to post all of my gardening failures, which are many! It's going to be a fun post
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