top 10 reasons why i suck at gardening.

when i first started my garden about a month ago, i was on top of the world. things were growing! i was making life! i would eat salad like a boss all summer long!

almost like sex fantasies, i would imagine myself harvesting shining and plump red tomatoes and pornographically large cucumbers (ron jeremy grade produce). it would be glorious, and things were going so well!

and then, shit started to go wrong:

1. neighborhood cats started digging in my seed areas, killing whole squares of crops (i lost 3 squares of lettuce and one square of carrots).

2. my tomatoes won’t pollinate. the flowers just turn brown and die, and the bees never come. i only have the 4 tomatoes that were already pollinated when i got the plant.

3. my peppers are dying. the little pepper buds are just shriveling and falling off.

4. my cucumber is taking over everything. i find it’s spindly tendrils wrapped around every other plant in the bed- strangling them all slowly. although to its credit, it’s the only thing that’s actually producing any sort of vegetation.

5. my green beans have nothing to climb up, and they are OUT OF CONTROL.

6. my pumpkin just doesn’t look right. it has leaves rotting off and flowers dropping like crazy.

7. my butter lettuce keeps getting ass pounded by the rain and is looking very very sad.

8. i tried last weekend to install some barrier plants to try to keep the cats out (brussels sprouts, cauliflower, & iceberg lettuce), but i don’t think the brussels sprouts are supposed to be yellow.

9. maybe planting 5 heads of iceberg lettuce in one square was a mistake?

10. the basil seems fine, but i don’t eat that much basil.

basically my gardening euphoria has quickly descended into gardening shame and disappointment. maybe i should read a book or something, but i don’t even know where to start. i just feel very overwhelmed and very at sea. i could ask the lovely soul who helped me plant it in the first place, but i don’t want her to be disappointed in me! basically, i am castrated by my lack of knowledge and fear of failure.

i thought that gardening was supposed to be relaxing!  somebody please, FIX IT.

*no, that dead garden picture isn’t mine, but you can check out the “progress” of my garden on my flickr page. i haven’t taken any pictures of the really tragic stuff, but you can picture them in your mind’s eye (don’t forget to make ’em extra shriveled).

i try it- vegetable growing bonanza!

i’m not exactly the earth mother.  i like plastic, and pop culture, and mini skirts. i watch A LOT of tv. it’s not that i hate the outdoors, or that i shun the environment… hey, i have reusable bags somewhere in my apartment. but you’re probably not going to catch me dabbing patchouli all over my braless ass while i listen to jam bands. you’re certainly not going to hear me talk about feeling “close to the earth”.

again, it’s not that i’m anti gardening… it’s just that i’ve killed a good 80% of the plants i’ve ever owned (let’s face it, i’m on my 3rd set of ikea cactuses).  but for some reason (with full knowledge of my spotty history with plants), when the deadbeat dude who is in foreclosure in my condo association abandoned his raised bed in the backyard… I WAS ALL OVER IT. at least that’s what i told the condo association president.

while i was waiting for planting season, i had lengthy and involved fantasies about what gardening would be like. i started asking agriculturally inclined friends for tips about what to do.

“you’re gonna need some compost. like a lot of compost.”

“you should hit the deering oaks farmer’s market for seedlings.”

“don’t bother with carrots, they never work out.”

“10-10-10!”

i took all of this sage knowledge into my brain, and waited for it to germinate.

nothing.

may arrived, and it was time to weed the box (which hadn’t been touched in 2 years)! except that if you remember may at all, it RAINED CONSTANTLY… the seeds of gardening excitement that i had planted in my brain were slowly being drowned by inopportune weather and the slow creep of laziness and apathy.

come the end of june, i still hadn’t done jack, and the excitement i once felt for the project had dissipated considerably. and by considerably, i mean entirely. it seemed too late. maybe i would do it next year… sorry condo association president.