Garden Blogger's Death Day :: July 2009

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome to Garden Blogger's Death Day for the month of July, 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.


Since my garden is all but dead right now and anxiously awaiting the Fall crop to be planted, I don't have much alive to brag about. And everything that died has found a new home in the compost bin where it's warm and dark and cozy. You'd be hard-pressed to find a Central Florida garden that's still producing vegetables after this many 90+ degree summer days - at least this is what I tell myself when I look at the barren wasteland that is my vegetable garden.

But I did find a couple of interesting things in the garden this month that have "Death Day" written all over them.

The first is a lovely specimen that I found on an okra plant that was hiding in the corner of my garden amongst some weeds up against the garden fence. This could easily be from a prehistoric gardening exhibit and was quite bizarre looking.


Yes, that is a petrified okra. It was very crispy and apparently took one look at the deathscape that is my garden and expired.

Finally I was quite upset that none of my potatoes grew at all. I wasn't surprised, but I was a bit upset because I cling to the hope that something will grow. When I was pulling the final weeds out of the garden I grabbed ahold of a particularly gnarly-looking weed and was quite surprised to see some baby potatoes clinging to life on the end of the weed.


I guess some of them did sprout - oops. I was too quick on the draw with the weeds again. Such is life - or death, I suppose.

So how about all of you? What fell victim to your gardening wrath this month? Feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog showing what you killed or maimed this month. 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.