@knowledge-seeker asked a question this week: How Is Your Garden Doing? well ...gosh darn it! It's been a bumpy start to the season here at Walkerland.

First I tell you about my most epic fail ... it's a doozie.

I thought the potato infestation of 2016 was unbeatable (another story for another day) but this one wins hands down. In one fell swoop I've managed to kill 58 beautiful heirloom tomato plants. I'm talking 18 varieties of lovely, rare, beautiful tomatoes.

I'm pretty ticked off with myself because I've been nurturing these gorgeous plants for well over six weeks, painstakingly hardening them off - the works. A lot of time and effort went into growing them and they were gorgeous! I even waited more than a week longer than usual to bring them out to the greenhouse.

Then just like that ... I killed them.

I really did shed a few tears over this but I bounced back because as Cher would say: "the beat goes on". Yes it does. I changed the lyrics to fit my situation. It was very therapeutic.

The beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain
La de da de de, la de da de da

Charlotte's got a problem in the greenhouse, uh huh
Her tomatoes have turned brown, uh huh
The Red Zebras, wilted and sad, uh huh
Mortgage Lifters, need rescuing, uh uh

And the beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain
de da de da

If you haven't listened to this song with it's correct lyrics before, it's a rather catchy rhythm meant to be sang enthusiastically.

The Survivors

Fortunately all but one of the tomato plants that I had actually gotten around to planting in the greenhouse survived ... maybe 15 plants in total. We rely heavily on the food we grow as part of maintaining our homesteading lifestyle so I put a lot of pressure on myself to get it right when it comes to gardening. It's sort of a big deal to mess up like this.. but truly ... worse things can and will probably happen. That's part of being a gardener.

I usually plant around 40+ tomato plants to meet our needs for fresh eating, sauce, condiments, salsa, etc and I even promised some plants to my neighbour so I am simply horrified that I will have to purchase some starts from the garden centre.

Why did this happen?

Impatience on my part. Not paying enough attention. Maybe I didn't harden the plants off enough ... its sometimes hard to be sure. The weather has been really strange. I am used to planting on the May long weekend but we continue to get nightly frost warnings and the temperatures are fluctuating sometimes by 30 degrees from morning to night. Everything is confused. Thank goodness we grow plenty of hardy plants as well. Diversification is key!

Recovery

I'm not taking any risks with the surviving plants. I gave them a bit of fish fertilizer and a good watering and sang to them. I pruned all of the wilted leaves. At night all all the plants are being covered by buckets and pails and then over that I'm putting frost fabric and some plastic. That should keep the temperature up a little bit more and the rest is up to fate.

All tucked in for the night

Garlic

The Garlic in the field has yellow tips which is not a good sign. Although there are several reasons this can happen, in this case the garlic does not like wet feet and we've had a lot snow which made the ground very soggy and this was followed by plenty of rain.

I added some nitrogen to the soil and gave it a good feeding and well just have to see. We've been working really hard at building up our heavy clay soil, we even have trenches to divert the water (it's working quite well). The garlic in the raised beds is well ahead in growth and vigour.

We have loads of oregano ...everywhere! This is absolutely an effortless victory because it grows like wild fire but I'll take it!

The frog pond is almost done and the herb spiral (rock pile) is well ...ready for frost free days so we can plant the herbs (thankfully I didn't murder those). There will be a lot of plants/shrubs planted around the pond in the next few days.

The big old crab apple tree will be putting on its show soon - is there anything better than apple blossoms?

There's a lot of wonderful things happening so I can't get too down in the mouth about this. Lessons have been learned and we just move on. and on. La de la de la.

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[@walkerland ]
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