Every year, I plant a garden in my back yard, and every year, I usually experience about 50 percent success. Half of the plants do very well, while the other half make it their mission in life to suck up water and fertilizer for a few months before dying without producing any edible payback. I have gotten used to that dynamic. I take the good and accept the bad.
Not this year. This year, every plant in my garden decided that they were going on strike. They seemed determined to show me up for the farming failure they have always perceived me to be. From the day I planted the first seeds, I could almost hear the giggles and whispers as they conspired against me.
Let this blog be my written capitulation to the inevitable. I quit. I surrender. I cease and desist. My white flag is firmly planted in the ground, and hopefully, unlike everything else I put in the ground this year, it will not die.
The ordeal started with the zucchini. I plant squash every year because it is the easiest thing in the world to grow. You almost have to go out of your way to screw up growing zucchini. It will sometimes pop up in a garden uninvited like some kind of predatory, invasive lifeform dropping out of the sky to take over the planet.
A month or so after planting, I noticed that the zucchini plants had become infested with squash bugs. I tried pesticides, oils, and even physically removing the bugs by hand. The bug population outpaced my ability to keep up with them. They sucked and chewed on the plants until the leaves wilted and the zucchini turned yellow and fell off before growing large enough to pick.
When the battle was officially lost, I pulled out the plants and threw them away. As I pulled the zucchini plants from the garden, many of the squash bugs fell off onto the ground. I began to stomp them into the dirt, venting my frustrations on the tiny invaders who had rendered the simplest plant to grow into a desiccated heap in my yard. As I stepped on the miniature vampires, I discovered something I had never previously known about squash bugs.
They can fly.
To my horror, several of the little monsters launched themselves into the air, and all I could do was watch helplessly as they redistributed themselves through the rest of the garden. They quickly disappeared from sight. As they landed on the still healthy plants, I could hear their little squeals of glee as they found fresh fields of vegetables to destroy.
In addition to the bugs, the heat this summer has been oppressive. Sacramento has been experiencing a record number of days in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Even the plants that were bug free could not hold up against long hours in the direct path of the blistering sunlight. They wilted and dried out, lying down in surrender like French soldiers in World War II.
I tried giving them extra water during the hottest part of the day, but it was as futile as trying to push back the tide with a slotted spoon. The end was obvious, and inevitable.
All summer long, I have been growing small, withered plants that would open a few pathetic flowers, then die off before being able to produce any fruits or vegetables. I haven’t been this disappointed since EM1 dropped out of college.
I have tomato plants with no tomatoes, cucumber plants with no cucumbers, pepper plants with no peppers, and lettuce that resembles the bagged salads you forget in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator for several months. (Assuming the bagged salads also included a handful of hungry bugs.)
The garden isn’t the end of it either. I have several peach trees that suffered from leaf curl and dropped all their fruit before it could ripen. I have two apricot trees that just decided to take the year off, and I’m not totally certain why. I also have a couple apple trees that the birds seem to be enjoying very much. Every piece of fruit in those apple trees seems to have been nibbled or pecked by something that was only interested enough to take a few bites before moving on to make room for the next vaguely hungry animal in line at the buffet.
And the coup de grace in this disaster of cultivation is my back lawn. I have a huge dead hole in the middle of my lawn where the kids set up their inflatable pool. They swam in the thing once, then ignored the pool for weeks. I asked them several times to deflate it and move it, but instead, they let it remain in place just long enough that nothing green could possibly survive in the circular zone of destruction directly underneath.
It’s like a cosmic joke that everything I touch this year will die a slow, agonizing death. Even grass isn’t safe from my swath of carnage.
In light of my vegetative failures, I have decided it is time to give up. Going outside each day to view the destruction of flora that used to be my home landscaping has beaten me down to the point of submission. I am accepting defeat.
From this day forward, I will remain indoors where my cursed touch will be limited to the few sacrificial house plants shivering in fear on the windowsill. The iris and the begonia are doomed, but they can die knowing that their sacrifice will not be in vain.
They died so that others might live.
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