Garden Blogger's Death Day :: July 2010

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome back to Garden Blogger's Death Day! We're here to list our losses for July, 2010! 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.



I mentioned last month that I gave up the gardening goat for the summer. I had full intentions of planting sunflowers in July, but a certain white puppy found the package of sunflower seeds so that plan fell by the wayside too. Apparently they were tasty and so was the packaging. I have no pictures of the garden because you've already seen the trainwreck it has become and after being gone for our family vacation, it's only become more overgrown.

The good news is that the Fall planting season is coming up quickly for us Floridians, and as long as hurricane season treats us kindly, it's a much easier season to keep things alive than our insanely hot summers. Plus I have plans to put down some stepping stones around the raised beds to help with weeds. I have a bad situation where I need a fence around the garden to keep the puppy out, but it also keeps the weed wacker out. I'm hoping some of these stepping stones will at least help...a little.

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.

**********
Thanks to Annie's Granny for hunting me down and convincing me to get back on the computer. I'm soooo out of the groove this summer, but think life will return back to normal once school starts in a couple of weeks and Farmer B and the boys get back into their regular routine....which will leave me with more time on the computer and less time figuring out how to entertain the troops 13 hours a day 7 days a week.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: June 2010

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome back to Garden Blogger's Death Day! We're here to list our losses for June, 2010! 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.



June is the month where I realize it's time to give up the goat, throw in the towel and let the garden fat lady sing. I allow my garden to fall victim to the elements - the heat, the humidity, the heat, the weeds, the heat and the bugs. I can't go out in the garden during daylight hours and still remain conscious and coherent. My boys refuse to go outside too, so I have to visit the garden after they go to bed. They're still young enough that "before they get up" doesn't exist, so there's no visiting the garden early in the morning.

As any mother can tell you, that list of things you promise yourself you'll do after you get the kids in bed is really long. You have all these great aspirations of all the things you'll get accomplished once you have the house to yourself. You envision yourself waltzing around your house folding clothes, organizing closets, scrubbing floors and writing novels. The problem is that sometimes you become a victim of that Life-Sucking Vortex of Doom that lives inside your couch. You get the kids in bed, sit down on the couch for one minute, put your feet up and the next thing you know you burst back into consciousness, look at the pitch dark windows, realize it's 10 pm and you haven't moved an inch.


So after a few nights (weeks) of this, my garden has become an overgrown soupy mess of death that I have all but given up on. I'm not proud to admit this, but it's time I came out of the gardening closet and let you all see what my garden has become.


The beans are rusty, dried up and withered. The tomatoes are still producing - sort of. The tomatoes are tiny and covered in stink bugs, which I have yet to figure out a way of killing short of EG's method using the "thumb of death," which isn't really my style. The squash never produced anything but dead squash. The eggplants are turning a strange color. The cabbage is dead. The cucumber is dead and withered.


The grass and weeds are knee high. There is thick angry Florida grass coming up through the landscaping cloth (aka cheesecloth) in my raised beds. I'm embarrased to share these photos. I much prefer to stay in the gardening closet and give off the vibe that I've got it all together.


Okay, okay - yes, everything has bit the dust…

…except my leeks! I don't know what it is about leeks and my garden. They're like peanut butter and jelly - they just go together perfectly. So my leeks are looking fantastic. It's what I cling to until the Fall planting season, which for us is known as the heart of hurricane season.

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.

**********

On a different note, are any of you bloggers having blogger issues? My scheduled posts aren't working anymore. I usually write a post the night before and schedule it to appear in the morning. They aren't appearing now. Like this post should have shown up this morning since I wrote it last night and it didn't. Hmph. Also, I approve comments right from my email, but lately when I log in to blogger it'll tell me I have 10 comments awaiting approval. When I click on the link, it comes up empty. Very strange... Anyone else?

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: May 2010

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome back to Garden Blogger's Death Day! We're here to list our losses for May, 2010! 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.



Thanks to some poorly-timed planting and my big insect invasion I have a lot to lay to rest this month. I think a moment of silence will be in order at the end of this post because a mass burial in the compost bin will be taking place momentarily. On a brighter note, I have much more alive than dead, which as you know, is a huge measure of gardening success in my book.

The spinach just wasn't meant to be. I'm going to assume it was just too hot for spinach. It's either that or it's that "gardening paradox" issue that keeps coming up in my yard - you know about the paradox, right? The more I'm looking forward to a plant growing, the greater its chances of death. Of course the opposite is true as well. If you don't care about a plant or even like the fruit that it puts out, it'll be big, bushy and prolific just to spite you. I think I had about nine spinach plants growing because I was SO looking forward to fresh spinach, and they're all brown wilted sticks now. It rained all day today and yesterday so I didn't get outside to photograph it, but here it is about three weeks ago before it died.


You know, my spinach disaster has reminded me of a very important lesson I've learned from my garden failures. If you're a new gardener (especially a new Florida gardener), take note of this important lesson that I learned the hard way:

You'll read in numerous gardening books and websites and you can feel safe planting what is offered in season at your local nursery or big box store (like Home Depot or Lowes). The idea is that each planting zone's stores will only stock the seedlings that should be planted in your area at that time of the year, so plant what's being sold and you'll have success. IT'S NOT TRUE! I planted spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage this Spring because they were for sale in these stores. But I have a Florida Vegetable Gardening book that specifically states that spinach should only be planted in Central Florida in October-November; that broccoli should be planted from August-January; that cabbage should be planted from Sept-Jan and cauliflower from October-January. Well aren't I the sucker for planting the seedlings this Spring that we picked up at local nurseries? Indeed I am. So the big lesson - consult your local planting guides to see what's safe to plant and don't rely on the old wisdom of what's for sale is what's safe to plant.

The cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli just plain need to come out and move into their new homes in compost-world. They bolted straight to seed and never grew out, but grew up. I'm not sure why I have hung on to them for so long…I think I just liked seeing something green in their little squares, but clearly they're just attracting pests at this point. I only had a couple of each that went in the garden this spring, so I suppose it's no great loss in the grand scheme of the garden. This is how the broccoli has looked for about two months.


And one of my summer squash plants grew a nice looking squash and then the end turned rotten and fell off. I assume it's blossom end rot, but if it is, I'll admit to being quite surprised it appeared in my SFG. I assumed the soil was good enough that it didn't need too much tinkering with. I believe if it is BER, then the plants cannot be saved? I suppose I do have some reading up to do - as always.



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.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: April 2010

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Welcome to the first Garden Blogger's Death Day for the Spring planting gardening season of 2010!! It's GBDD for April, 2010! 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.


I've done quite well with this year's garden, but I always start off cocky and confident and end hungry and shamed. Each planting season I do get better and I find that less plants fall to my black-thumbed wrath each time I start a new garden. But, of course, there are always victims.


Here is my nice little square of 16 carrots - please excuse the ugly weed poking up in the front of the picture. As you can see, I only had three carrots poke through the soil. The other 13 have died a sad little seedy death in my garden. I blame the heat since that's always a safe bet around here.


Now this one I'm mad about. I've tried to grow English Peas a few times now and every time something happens to them when they get about this height. This time it's that huge mound of ants you see at the bottom. They've raised the soil, pushed the plants over to one side and flat-out displaced my peas and overtaken at least a third of this raised bed. I am working on a plan to annihilate the buggers, but I think it's a little late for my peas. RIP English Peas. One day the planets will align correctly and I'll find a way for you to survive in my garden.


This bottom half of a tomato plant falls right into the category of "I know better," which says a lot since I rarely know better when it comes to gardening. I often fly by the seat of my pants so the fact that I screwed up AND I knew better says a lot. This tomato plant was tall and gorgeous and full of wonderful little yellow flowers. I knew I should put a cage on it, but I can procrastinate better than anyone. Then a big storm came through this past weekend and the plant fell over and broke in half. Well isn't that special? I put a cage on it and noticed that I have a little growth out of the top of the main stem, so hopefully all is not lost.

Overall this was a nice quiet first Death Day of 2010 for me! I have something eating my eggplant, strange white spots on my spinach, a prematurely flowering broccoli and sickly parsnips, so I fear that May's Death Day might be chock full of crime scene photos if I don't get my act together this month.

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.

A prematurely flowering broccoli and a Garden Bloggers Death Day Announcement!

I've been a bit busy lately and the blog has taken a nice comfy seat on the backburner. I've finally found a spare couple of minutes tonight and thought I'd share my latest gardening dilemma with you. I have a prematurely flowering broccoli. What gives?


It's a new plant and with the first little heads of broccoli came yellow flowers. It never grew a nice large head of broccoli - I got funky small little broccoli buds and yellow flowers. I can't eat yellow flowers with my dinner! What happened to my broccoli? Do I need to get rid of the plant now?


Any ideas? I've never had this happen before and I'm perlexed - as usual.

*****
And my BIG ANNOUNCEMENT is that I'm holding the first Garden Blogger's Death Day of 2010 on April 30th for the Spring 2010 planting season!!



Garden Blogger's Death Day 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.

So join me on April 30th for GBDD! Post on your blog 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.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: December 2009 :: The Wrap Up

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

 

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

 

 

I had grand plans of posting a wonderful Year in Review wrap-up story about what's lived and what's died in my garden in 2009, along with photos of the current state of things, but it just didn't work out. Between the new puppy, family in town, Farmer B off work, the boys off school and everything else involved in the holidays I just plain ran out of time to sit at the computer. But at 9 pm on New Year's Eve I am squeezing in a quick wrap-up before the year ends.

 

I know that this year brought some great changes to our household and it's amazing to think about how much life has changed in 12 months.

 

In January 2009:

 

• I had a beloved dog called Baillan who was happy living out her golden years on a rumpled burgundy bed on the corner.
• I had fantasies of owning chickens, but thought people who actually did own chickens were a little bit weird.
• I had a 468 square foot vegetable garden that wasn't doing especially well and I was considering giving it all up.
• I had two little boys who were facing their 3rd and 5th birthdays and asking all sorts of questions about preschool and "real school"
• I actually didn't blog for the entire month of January 2009 - my first break from blogging, and from gardening for that matter.
• My confidence level with gardening was about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 and we had barely had anything worth harvesting.

 

A year later, December 2009:

 

• That beloved dog has passed, but a new little puppy has bounded into my life and is reminding me constantly of my old best friend.
• I actually own my own hens and have come to enjoy chicken ownership, all things egg-related, and spending too much time on the Backyard Chicken Forum.
• The 468 square foot vegetable garden is gone and in it's place are two raised bed square-foot gardens.
• My two little boys are now facing their 4th and 6th birthdays and each has a year of preschool and "real school" under their belts. They've grown up so much in the past year and I'm having one of those "where did my babies go?" moments.
• My confidence level with gardening is now about a 3.5 on the 1 to 10 scale and we've actually eaten all sorts of meals from the garden including some awesome leek soups and quiches!
• I have found that gardening and blogging are two of my favorite things and I have no intention of giving up either, no matter how unskilled I may be.

 

So although my final post of the year was anticlimactic, the year wasn't. It was a great year with lots of change, plenty of death, but lots of new life and growth too. I'm looking forward to a new year of family, pets, planting, blogging and reading about the gardening lives of my garden blogger friends around the country.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: November 2009

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

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


Garden Blogger's Death Day is becoming a bit tough this time of year. Most of the rest of the country isn't growing anything so I'm killing things alone down here in Florida. I have gardening guilt for plain forgetting about GBDD last month. I blame the fact that I was hand-making costumes for two little boys and then decorating the house on Halloween to rival any professional event and then trick-or-treating until the kids dropped. I told myself I'd never let blogging get in the way of the family and I guess October I allowed myself to drop the blogging ball.

I may have dropped the ball in October, but Marie over at Garden in Bethlehem PA did not. She still posted a Garden Blogger's Death Day entry for October and I missed the whole thing. Thanks Marie!! I'm glad someone is showing the Death Day love!

But here we are in November and I've killed some nice little plants this month. You read about the vile little armyworms that treated my Swiss Chard like an all-you-can-eat buffet, leaving me with two stunted plants in one box and only stems in the other box.

I also managed to kill of a yellow bell pepper without even trying. I am not a good transplanter because a plant's most precarious time in my house is when I first put it in the garden. The little bell pepper barely made it a week before it gave up the fight.


My other two bell pepper plants are short and stunted and have oddly-shaped peppers on them, but at least they're growing and alive!

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.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: September 2009

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

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


I am pleased to say that this is the first month that nothing has died in the garden, making me unable to participate in GBDD! I am ashamed to say that nothing died because we didn't have a garden this month. But I'm PROUD to say that we're planting our brand new square foot garden today (that I posted about last night) so hopefully we'll be back in the gardening game soon!

And if anyone needs any proof that I have anxiety about our new SFG setup failing miserably too, I had a dream last night that I was planting broccoli in the garden and the seedling wouldn't stand upright and kept flopping over. I decided to tie a brick to the roots to keep them down and as I did our neighbors houses exploded in big fireballs. I looked over my shoulder and a large alien ship was firing at the neighborhood. I knew my large floppy broccoli plant had hidden me from their view and saved our lives.

I seriously need garden therapy.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: August 2009

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

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


I have an admission to make that I've honestly been scared to mention on this blog. I took a blogcation earlier this month to focus on the boys with school starting...and it turns out that I took a month-long vacation from the garden without realizing what distasterous effects would come from it. Yep, I went one full month without setting foot in the garden. It didn't seem like a bad thing at the time. The sunflowers had wilted. The okra had seen better days. So I figured, what could be the harm?

Well this could be the harm. This is what a month straight of sunny days, lots of rain and no weed control will do to a garden.


I am embarrased to show this to you all. This is a gardening blog and my garden could indeed be housing a Yeti and I'd never know it. We've spent all of our free time building a chicken run (done!) and Farmer B and the boys have been digging trenches to expand our French Drain system through the rest of the yard (without paying to have it done like we did last time - VERY time consuming, but a HUGE money saver). So the garden just kind of sat...and well...you see what happened.

The French Drain addition should be finished by next weekend and then Farmer B is going to work on the raised beds so we can begin SFG for the first time!! We're going to pull up the garden fence, mow the garden, till it in, mulch it and then build the boxes on top. So we have a plan, but right now all we have is death.

Big. Fat. Gardening. Death.

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.

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.

Garden Blogger's Death Day :: June 2009

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

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).

Garden Blogger's Death Day: Announcement

Ding, Ding, Ding… bring out your dead!

Due to the awesome response from my fellow plant-killing garden bloggers, I have decided to host Garden Blogger's Death Day on the last day of every month. It's the perfect time to confess your gardening sins for the month and come clean as to what fell victim to your wrath. Instead of gardening blogs filled with gorgeous blooms and fat, healthy vegetables, this is your time to expose the dead and dying withered messes that breathed their last breath under your care.


As a relatively new gardener who's light on skills, but heavy on dead plants, it makes me feel better to see some of the seasoned pro's unveiling their garden corpses instead of just reveling in their mad gardening skills. It's a big fat case of "misery loves company" in the garden.

If you'd like to join me in Garden Blogger's Death Day, come back here on the last day of the month and leave a comment as to what kicked the bucket in your garden that month. Feel free to put a link to your blog so we can visit it and see pictures of the plants that bought the farm, became one with the compost heap, and crossed to the great gardening beyond.

Still confused? Click here to read more about Garden Blogger's Death Day.

Hope to see you all on June 30th!! Sadly, I already have plenty to contribute…as always. Here's a free button if you'd like to use one.

Display the Garden Blogger's Death Day button on your blog with pride! Just copy and paste this text below onto your site.

 <a href="http://gardeningwithoutskills.blogspot.com"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/baillan/garden/gb-death-day-1.jpg"></a>

Garden Blogger's Death Day

Anyone that's been around the garden blog circuit for awhile knows about Carol from May Dreams Garden. She's been voted as one of the most influential garden bloggers and she has a popular monthly post called Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month gardeners from around the country can post a comment saying what's blooming in their gardens. It's a great way to see what's growing in other gardens around the country and connect with other garden bloggers.

Then there's Carolyn at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago who hosts Garden Blogger's Muse Day on the 1st of every month. It's a nice way to bring in the month with a poem and a photograph of something inspiring. You'd think as the current U.S. LAPCPADPOUB title-holder, I'd be able to wipe the floor clean with deliciously dire cat poems, but as of now I merely enjoy reading what others write.

But where's the day for gardeners who overwater, underwater, maim, prune or otherwise neglect their plants to a state of dismal droopage or untimely death? There isn't one, my friends…until now.

Introducing my own personal meme: Garden Blogger's Death Day. I've had two planting seasons in my vegetable gardening life and I've had widespread death and destruction both times. I know there has to be some other gardeners out there like me with black thumbs who kill more than they cultivate, or even green-thumbed gardeners who have a lapse in judgment and commit accidental planticide.


Did you accidentally leave the sprinklers on for 13 hours and flood the garden? (check). Did you have an infestation of hornworms and now have leafless sticks instead of tomato plants? (check). Did a freak rainstorm flood your garden and wash away your plants? (check). Did you overheat your seedlings and singe them all to a crisp? (check). Are you so bad at remembering to water your plants that you bought some Aqua Globes from that infomercial and then you forgot to fill them with water and killed the plants anyway? (check). Well here is your support group, baby.

I have decided to host Garden Bloggers Death Day today. I'm so incredibly disappointed that I was actually "getting" this whole gardening gig a little bit this time and then most of it washed away and became a yellow, mushy lump of rotten slush after 14 inches of relentless rain. Here are some pictures of what my garden looked like after the rain - it has since sat in this state for over a week and it's more yellowed and rotten now than when these photos were taken a couple of days ago. It has now been pruned and a bunch of the dead plants have become one with the compost heap.






If you too have had an untimely plant death, feel free to post it in my comments section. Maybe I'll feel like less of a big fat gardening loser if I discover I'm not the only one who can't catch a break from Mother Nature or Mutha Shut Yo Mouth, as she's being called around here lately. Hmph. Maybe we can even support each other like a good pair of pantyhose or a well-staked garden trellis.