Since embarking on my gardening adventure going on three years ago, I have had my successes, my total flops, my nemeses and my pièce de résistance... there has been good lettuce years, a good bean year, always good radish years, and a good greens year in general... I've also unsuccessfully attempted pumpkins and squash every year... ahem.
I've even had my constant, average-performance reliables like herbs and tomatoes. I'm always learning, always finding a better way of doing something, and always making new mistakes.
New mistakes? Oh yes... which brings me to the point: Did you know that if you incorrectly compost spent tomato plants, you can not just perpetuate but actually introduce the fungus that causes early blight? That's right... blight... as in the disease that stunts and kills not just tomatoes, but peppers, eggplants, and apparently spinach, lettuce, basil, squash, kale, cucumbers, and cantaloupe (so far).
It is a total bummer. Total. Bummer.
Now, there are some peaks with the valleys...
...but even in those peaks, there are digs at my optimism... like, oh, root-knot nematodes all up in my carrots...
...or the usual, significant, constant caterpillar presence (there's more to those butterflies than pretty pretty)...
...so, what can one do? Make notes, take pictures, do whatever one can do to remember this and do it better one more time, again and again? Perhaps... but with all the wind knocked out of my sails, there are days when I just want to throw my hands up and walk away... even though everything looks perfect... from far away.
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