Woes of a Gardener

One of the guys I work with started a container garden and he told me he bought all his supplies at the Dollar Tree. So I thought, why not? I went to the Dollar Tree during one of my lunch breaks and bought all the pots, seeds, and soil that I would need. I paid about $15 I think. I bought a seed packet that had radish, carrot, cabbage, bean, tomato, cucumber, and romaine lettuce. I found in my garage the little wood container from last year when I tried a "do your own herb kit". Ya lets just say herbs were not so easy for me.

This time I remembered I needed to mark my plants which was one of my herb plant mistakes and caused problems for me. The second thing I did differently is I didn't use the whole packet of seeds. Yup, that's right, didn't know I shouldn't use a whole packet before. I also checked my plants and watered them at least every other day.

I was so excited to move my plants to larger containers. My bean, tomato, and cucumber plants were going cRaZY! They were wrapping around my other plants and I kept having to disconnect them afraid that they were going to choke the other. I bought a trellis and separated my plants.

I noticed that I had so many slugs and caterpillars. I kept killing them but noticed my cabbage plant was being demolished. At one point in time I went to check my plants and saw a wasp grab a lush bright green baby caterpillar and started eating it. There were 2 other caterpillars and I got rid of them and the wasp came back looking for them later. I never thought I would cheer for a wasp!


It was weird because my tomato and cucumber plant kept flowering and flowering and nothing was growing. I finally found on the tomato one little bity tomato starting to grow that was the size of my big thumbs fingernail. However nothing ever came of it. I don't know why I was not getting any production from my plants. 

And then the rains came! It was the first tropical storm of the year and when it left, it left rain after rain after rain. I think my plants just didn't get enough sun and just seemed to get some sort of fungus. 


I was taking so much time and care into them and it didn't matter. I finally gave up. My plants still sit out there looking like a hurricane hit them. The only one that has somehow made it is my romaine lettuce! It is flourishing!