This past spring, my wife and I developed our first vegetable garden together. We took advantage of being able to attend a program held by our local Purdue Extension Office about gardening at the library I work at. We were the only attendees sadly, but we were then able to get our own one-on-one appointment with the Master Gardener who came. With their advice, and entire presentation printed out for us to take, we began our work.
With the help of a family member with a tiller, we were able to make a mini-plot with which to develop our garden. We planted six large tomato plants, one cherry tomato plant, carrots, radishes, habanero peppers, and rhubarb. The importance of regular watering became abundantly clear after a brief drought and witnessing our carrots never growing. Eventually, our rhubarb died as well. However, our tomato plants exploded in growth and success. Too much in fact. Tomato cages were soon falling over, too weak to hold them up, begging for reinforcements in the form of large tree branches.
How could this happen? My hypothesis: using Miracle-Gro a bit too often. Next year will see a large reduction in the use of that. Too powerful. Yet, it was nice to be able to substitute trips to the garden for trips to the grocery store when we needed tomatoes. The habanero peppers? Too powerful and may use for home defense.
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