The Five Stages of Gardening

The How Do Gardener ^ | July 5, 2012 | Rick Bickling

[orsonwb]

Gardening satire. A humorous adaptation of the Kübler-Ross Model, commonly known as the The Five Stages Of Grief, applied to gardening...

[orsonwb]

After pulling out spent plants all day yesterday, this made me laugh a bit.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Garden ping

[bgill]

Between the squash bugs and the heat, mine is kaput.

[cotton]

We harvested and ate our first sugar baby watermelon yesterday. It was very good and there are 14 more in the patch. We have baseball sized other types of watermelon. The squash plants are just dying and we don't know why. The raccoons picked and discarded all the tiny corn ears so we chopped the plants down, but the green, yellow, purple and pole bean are doing good. The red runner beans had three, count them 3 beans on 12 plants, but boy were the blossoms pretty. Happy gardening!

[afraidfortherepublic]

Congratulations! I envy your success. Because of medical problems in my family (my 99 year old mother broke her leg in CA) I planted NOTHING this year. I haven’t even pulled the weeds and turned over the beds. But, this was the year to take off because we’ve had a month-long drought and high heat. I would have had to spend all my time watering and still wouldn’t have saved the garden because of the necessity to go to CA from time to time.

[afraidfortherepublic]

PS — aren’t those sugar baby watermelons good? I should go out and check my garden. I could have a volunteer. I had volunteer sugar babies last year.

[hoosiermama]

My garden is beautiful.....even with the extreme heat. Invested in a couple of soaker hoses after the four rain barrels went dry. Hopfully we’ll get a soaker soon and fill the barrels.

Picked cukes, squash and beans this AM....Plenty for us and some to share to share.

Our church planted a praise patch. Produce is either distributed throughout the community. Those who can throw in a little for the food bank, otherwise it’s free to those who can’t. It’s is not only beautiful but plentiful.

[hoosiermama]

Just checked my sugar babes after you mentioned them....Forgot...How does one tell when they are ripe.

Pumpkins are already large.....Dug a few potatoes and onions to put in with the green beans....Wish you were closer I’d share.

[afraidfortherepublic]

I think you just wait until they get the size you want. Our summers here are so short that there is really no question. Just bring them in when you think that there is no more chance of them growing larger. LOL. August, September.

[Syntyr]

Just harvested the last round of maters... Now the two plants are wilting in the oppressive Houston heat. Time to till and refresh the barrel.

[heylady]

This is my first year gardening in North Texas and boy do I have a lot to readjust to. I don't mind hand watering my garden 2-3 times a day. That I can deal with. It is the bugs. First rolly-polly bugs ate all my pansies, next hugh yellow and black grasshoppers attacked my marigolds. Now they are chewing off whole branches of the coreopsis. My neighbors must be questioning my sanity when they see me chase after the grasshoppers with my spray bottle and then stomp them to death when they are too wet to fly. At one point last week I was ready to pull all the flowers up and throw them in the trash. I have calmed down this week and am now starting to evaluate what would be better flowers to plant next year. I am heavily considering ARTIFICIAL.

[fremont_steve]

When it comes to gardening - I go straight to “It’s Dead Jim!”

[Syntyr]

Our cucumbers have been rocking and rolling this summer! We are getting 3-4 cucumbers a week from a single plant. Big ones too...

[bgill]

Those yummy little cherries and yellow plums are all I’m getting this year. Got one roma earlier but my slicers aren’t doing anything. Corn didn’t do anything either before they died. Had to throw away all the squash because of the bugs. The peas just gave one bunch. The lettuce has bolted. The green beans were doing fine until the heat got too much for them to bloom. Getting a few cukes and put up 2 batches of pickles this week. I don’t know why but the garden is twice as large as it was last year and is producing half as much.

[KosmicKitty]

Every year - powdery mildew!! WHY ME!!!!

I’m already deep into stage 3 - bargaining

[rightly_dividing]

It sounds like this would be a good time to add amendments and strengthen your soil. Giving it a little R & R could be great for next year.

We use a drip irrigation system on all our garden stuff, veggies and flower beds so that we can jump into the car and disappear for a few days or a week or two without having to worry about watering our babies. It conserves water to a point of being an insignificant amount of our water bill.

We are getting quite a number of tomatos every day, along with 6” banana peppers too. Our okra is beginning to produce though only about 18” tall and about 5 weeks old.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Excellent advice. If it weren’t so blasted HOT out there, I’d get started right now. Maybe this weekend. :)

[rightly_dividing]

I understand about the heat. It’s been hot here, 96 yesterday, but we have been getting daily rains or rain forecasts, our entire 10 day forecasts are some type of thunderstorms everyday. No drought here.

[afraidfortherepublic]

We had over 101 yesterday and not a drop of rain in sisght. Rain is forecast every day, but it neverfalls. This is highly unusual for WI. We had a weather pattern like this the first summer I was here (1998), but never since.

[Syntyr]

Same on the maters. The two plants just burst with tomatoes at the beginning of the season but now they are spent. Leaves are brown and curly and no more maters. Forget the lettuce. Tried to plant that and the seedlings took one look at the ground and committed suicide! Even the chilis which like the heat aren’t getting very big before turning hot. The basil and mint are about the only things that are still growing...