The Great Garden Experiment - Part II

This is the 2nd installment in the GGE and my first update as to how things are going in the garden. If you recall from earlier, I planted one tomato plant in our garden in our regular garden soil and one in a pot with Miracle Gro soil - then did the same with two bell pepper plants. I was hoping to determine if our soil is what's preventing things from growing or if I'm just completely inept in the garden with a terminal case of BTS (that's Black Thumb Syndrome).

I will tell you that my assumption was that the pepper and tomato planted in the garden would go the way of the other plants in the garden and would start to wilt and die. I assumed that the plants in the pots would do quite well - thus proving that I am a great gardener with bad soil. I loved the idea of being able to pass the buck and blame bad soil.

Well wouldn't you know that my experiment has thrown me for a loop? Of course. I would expect nothing less.

Garden tomato plant is doing great and actually has a nice group of real live baby tomatoes on its leaves. It's quite green and perky looking, but has the funky dead leaves around the bottom that all the tomato plants in the garden have. Overall it looks quite healthy.

(Week one)

(Week two)

Potted tomato plant has something wrong with it.

(Week one)

(Week two)

I mentioned in a previous post that I have an organic gardening book to help me diagnose plant problems and when comparing the pictures I have officially diagnosed this tomato plant with 6 different viral strains, 4 bacteria and about 12 insect infestations. I'd like to narrow it down to ONE issue at some point. You can see that the inner leaves are sort of variegated and weird-looking, but the outer leaves look normal. I don’t like the person who started the rumor that any idiot can grow tomatoes. It's not true. Any idiot can plant a tomato plant, but it takes a special kind of idiot to grow actual tomatoes.

(If you know what's wrong, please post a comment. I'm desperate)

So score 1 point for the garden tomato plant.

Garden bell pepper plant looks a bit eaten and pathetic. It does have some small buds in the center that look like they might want to be baby peppers, but right now it's a small plant with holey, droopy leaves.

(Week one)

(Week two)

Potted bell pepper plant looks strong, dark green and healthy. There are no buds or flowers on it, but it looks like it's quite happy. It appears to have branched off into two separate plants.

(Week one)

(Week two)

So score 1 point for the potted bell pepper plant.

So what the heck does this tell me? I'm so confused. Only one method was supposed to work. Now I have partial garden success and partial pot success. So frustrating! I'll keep up the experiment and update again when we have some more progress.