When I hit the garden center a couple of weeks ago to buy the
plants for my garden, I kind of went overboard.
My boyfriend and I were like two kids in a candy store, each of
us excitedly grabbing baby plants off the shelves and plunking them
in our cart, as visions of a lush garden with tasty, sun-ripened
fruits and vegetables waiting to be picked danced in our heads.
When I hit the garden center a couple of weeks ago to buy the plants for my garden, I kind of went overboard.
My boyfriend and I were like two kids in a candy store, each of us excitedly grabbing baby plants off the shelves and plunking them in our cart, as visions of a lush garden with tasty, sun-ripened fruits and vegetables waiting to be picked danced in our heads. Visions of trying to get rid of bags and bags of squash did not enter the scene.
I knew we were buying a lot of plants, but I figured, based on my past experience, that nothing would grow, so it wouldn’t really matter. And if, on the off chance that something did grow, I figured it would only be one or two plants that suffered through my care and came to bear fruit. It seems, however, that I was wrong.
For some reason, this year, things are growing. Maybe it’s my boyfriend’s intervention. Maybe it’s the fact that we started with seedlings instead of seeds – although that can’t be it because we planted a bunch of seeds, too, and those are sprouting as well. Maybe I’m speaking too soon. After all, only the strawberries are actually bearing fruit right now, and there’s no telling if they’ll ripen. One year, of my six strawberry plants, two produced flowers and tiny green berries that never did anything but stay tiny and green.
But the other plants are really starting to go to town – all except our cucumber plant, which our dog seems to have sat on. Even our tomatoes, which turned brown and papery and lost a lot of leaves when we stuck them in the ground, are recovering nicely.
It turns out that it probably wasn’t the soil that was sending our tomatoes into their death throes as I had suspected, it was well-meaning me.
You see, “Mulching it Over” garden columnist Keith Muraoka (see page C3) believes it was probably a combination of transplant shock and overfertilizing if I mixed fertilizer into the soil before planting, which I did. Of course, in my zeal to make my soil “healthy,” I mixed too much fertilizer into the soil before planting, making my soil “deadly” instead.
Despite my best intentions, though, the plants are living. And now I’m really worried.
Keith mentioned that I may have fallen into the beginning gardener’s trap – that of overplanting. That, I readily acknowledge, and as I stated previously, it’s because I didn’t think things would grow. But our baby plants are thriving; the seeds we planted this year are sprouting; and even some seeds we planted last year, which may be squash plants, have decided to come up. Keith foresees overabundance, and now I do, too.
We managed to kill two of the possibly-squash seedlings by transplanting them away from our tomatoes, but a third that we moved is just taking advantage of its new space. I’m afraid of all the bounty we’ll have. Very afraid.
Anybody interested in getting in on some squash futures?
If you have tips, questions or comments to share with readers, send them to me at cv*****@**********rs.com or call (408) 842-9505.
