Gardening: We All Learn

Good Day, Gardeners.

First, just to make it clear, you all know I'm a bit peculiar, right? Good.

Our post today is about how gardeners have to have a balanced relationship with their plants. Am I personifying plants a little? That depends on your perspective. Is that a not normal thing to do? Yes. But, you don't mind, do you? After all, you are reading my blog. :)

As you can (or can't--I'll be adding pictures soon) see, I brought in all my tomatoes from out-of-doors today. They are organized into three categories: Amana Orange tomatoes, German Striped Tomatoes and tomatoes that need to be either cut up right away or watched carefully. Altogether, there are [#].

Now, unfortunately, I was unable to get pictures before dark tonight, so I am unable to show you pictures of my gardens. They look really dead, neglected, and forlorn at this point.

My cucumbers got blight, and my squash didn't produce any squash--for that matter, they didn't produce any female flowers. Besides once when I was little, whenever I've tried to grow squash, I haven't gotten any. Anyways, later, it got powdery mildew. It's a little sad.

Both the cucumbers and squash died.

My herbs are still doing wonderfully, and although I did not get as many tomatoes as last year, I still got a fair number.

(You may be wondering where the plant personification is. Don't worry. It's coming.)

The title of this post is "We All Learn." So, what does this have to do with learning?

As gardeners, we must learn from our mistakes. This year, I learned I did not balance my trust the plants can grow up, survive and live happy and healthy lives alone with their need for some Tender Loving Care. I know the plants can survive without human intervention, but do they have the best quality of life that way? I don't believe so. I neglected watering them, which led to an inconsistent amount of water intake, causing splitting/cracking. As long as you make sure to cut around the cracks and make sure the tomato isn't infected, they should be fine to eat, but don't take my word for it. :)

Remember, though, it doesn't mean you're a terrible gardener if you did neglect your plants. :) Everyone makes mistakes. Plus, it's good not to be too concerned about them, because plants do get sick, die, and have other problems, which we don't want you to stress a ton about.

Another thing I did is I got heirloom seeds. The main reason I did this is because it's much easier to find organic, non-gmo heirloom seeds than regular tomato seeds. (I'll talk about why I use all-organic everything in another post.) I had no clue heirloom and regular seeds were any different. However, heirloom tomatoes are older, so they aren't specifically bred to resist disease, or have few birth defects, like today's tomatoes are. By the way, if you want to grow heirloom tomatoes, I'm not saying you shouldn't. They taste absolutely amazing. However, if you are a first-time gardener, it would be easier for you to do regular tomatoes; in other words, tomatoes not labeled as "heirloom."

Heirloom tomatoes need more TLC than regular tomatoes, but, your whole garden needs tons of TLC anyways. Weed, pick veggies, and research out-of-the-ordinary occurrences regularly. I also did not do this consistently. :)

But, however your garden turned out, be happy with it!

And, show your plants how much you love them by rocking your tomatoes back and forth like babies!

Spruce Nogard