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| The Lone Survivor! |
I was talking to my daughter on the phone one day, and she was all excited about the garden my son-in-law was making...trips to Lowes for landscape timber, soil, mulch...etc. You know all the usual stuff needed to start a home garden, to get all those fresh veggies.
Sounded pretty interesting I'm thinking to myself ...So after we hung up, I figured I would do the same, but on a much smaller scale. I certainly didn't plan on putting that much effort into this project...I was going to start small, and see how it went from there....So tomatoes were my vegetable of choice. Start small you know, and work my way up to the title..."Farmer".
Being the smart person I am, I googled tomatoes, and found out the you could actually grow them in big pots, thus eliminating the need for all the blood, sweat, and smashed fingers of removing grass from the yard, turning up the dirt, and putting down landscape timbers...What can I say, I wanted the tomatoes, I just didn't want to bust my butt growing them.
Off to Lowes garden center I go...I already had the large pots needed to grow my tomatoes, but I did need the plants, and a few other items to get this project off the ground so to speak.
Ok, what kind of tomatoes am I going to grow? Well shoot, I get to looking, and find out they have more than one variety, now I have a problem...do I want the small ones, the large ones, the organic ones...good grief I thought this was going to be easy. After much deliberation, and looking at the information that's on the pots, I pick one that states it can be grown in pots on the patio.
Problem Solved, choice made, but now how many of these plants do I need...how many tomatoes should I expect to get from a plant, how many plants are going to make it with me doing the planting, and care taking....these are the thoughts going through my pea brain as I'm standing there looking at these poor little soon to be experiments. Final result was 6...my thought process on this was, if I had success in keeping at least 2 of them alive, I would get more than enough tomatoes, and if all 6 made it then I would just back my truck along side the road leading into town and sell the excess...Retirement has a way of making you think about ways to earning extra money.
Let the games begin...I rushed home all ready to start my project in anticipation of harvesting a bountiful crop...Wrong! I swiftly unloaded my truck, well let me re-phrase...I unloaded my truck, I don't do anything swiftly anymore. Lined up all my six pots, read the directions for proper planting, and commenced to finding a new home for my 6 little friends...I just knew I had a sure thing working here...had the pots, bought some kind of super soil to put into the pots, sticks to support the plants when they got big, and screen to put around the pots to keep the birds, squirrels, or Buddy The Big Dog from getting into my plants, and eating the fruit of my harvest. Thinking ahead, yep no problems now...all I need to do is water, and wait for these babies to pop out on the vine, pick them when they are ripe...This is easy!
Wrong again!...Uh, someone forgot to tell me, that although I had protected my plants from the obvious, (Dog, birds, squirrels, wind, etc), but not from the unseen little critters that run around all over your plants, and you need a dang magnifying glass to see them. This project is now starting to turn into a war...Me vs unseen tomato killing bugs. Now let me also clarify one more thing...I can't totally blame the bugs...I may have over watered, or under watered, or maybe some of the pots were actually to small...but I'll be darned if I'm going to take the blame for that, this was my first try, and so I shouldn't be held accountable for these oversights....It was the freaking bugs!
Spotting the problem was fairly easy...if you see little holes in a leaf then it's not God's handy work helping the plants grow...its those miserable little bugs making a meal out of my tomato plants!
To combat these fierce little critters, I made another trip back to the garden center to buy bug spray....well here we go again, the shelves are covered with about a hundred million different kinds to choose from. So calmly, (if you knew me then you know the calm part is an outright lie) I start reading labels, and finally picked out the one that seems to be just right for my bug infestation, or so I thought.
Once back at home I promptly started my first wave of attack on my enemy...smuggly thinking I would have them on the run in no time at all...I really believe the only thing that the bug spray did was make those pesky little things more determined to get even with me. OH and did I mentioned I made sure to buy the Eco friendly spray, I wanted to make sure, and kill bugs without poisoning myself, or being accused of increasing the size of the hole in the ozone layer, if i actually did get any tomatoes off these sad looking little plants.
The outcome to this point is Bugs 5 / Me 1...Yes they are and have kicked my butt. As of this writing, I only have 1 poor little sad looking plant left, and my total harvest for this first tomato raising season was 2 tomatoes, which I ate bugs and all.
I think the final tally on this project of wanting to have something to do, plus maybe save a little money by raising some of my own food turned out quite well as opposed to other things I've done in the past.
I figure I'm only in the hole about a 100.00 as compared to having just gone down to the store, and outright bought the tomatoes...but we all know that home grown tomatoes taste better....well that is if the damn bugs don't eat them first!
Although this project didn't quite turnout like I had envisioned, it hasnt detered me from wanting to try again...and I tell you what, next time I will have a full blown task force of sprays, bigger pots, and more information about the do's and dont's of tomato growing, to back me up...so fair warning to the bug population in my back yard...I'll Be Back!
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