Taunted By Mother Nature

[Doelman]

I started and transplanted 6 heirloom tomatoes this year. Long story short, they all died between 2 weeks and 2 months after being transplanted. They all died from the same thing, some kind of fungal wilt, probably fusarium.

The other tomatoes in the background in the second picture are purchased hybrids that replaced the other tomatoes that died. The soil in these beds are engineered soil for raised beds (1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss) and it gets roughly 6-7 hours of direct sunlight a day. All the replacement tomatoes in that bed now have septoria leaf spot, but are at least producing.

I had tossed all the failed seedlings this spring into an old flower bed next to the house. This flower bed gets around 3.5 hours of sunlight a day, consists of terrible rocky/clay soil, and hasn't seen any kind of compost/fertilizer in the 10 years I've lived here. Well it seems one of the seeds was just a late bloomer and it ended up germinating. This tomato looks and has done better than ANY of the tomatoes I had germinated earlier this year. The only thing I've done with it is water it once when we had a week long dry stretch. Hilarious mother nature, just hilarious.

 

[marlingardener]

Ha, ha, ha from Mother Nature! She's a funny gal.
We got our first and only pumpkin from our compost pile. I carefully cleaned, dried, and saved seeds from a pie pumpkin we bought, and planted six seeds. A few came up, laid over, and quietly passed away. The seeds I'd cleaned out of the pie pumpkin and tossed on the compost pile came up, grew, bloomed, and gave us two pie pumpkins. Some of the best cherry tomatoes we've ever had came from self-seeders in what was intended to be a bean patch (tomatoes the previous year).
You can either gnash your teeth, or look on the bright side--at least we have some plants!

 

[alp]

Mother Nature is a naughty teenager! All my candytuft self-seeded in the wrong places and so are the Nicotians.. They are tall and yet they self-seeded right on the edge of the pathway. Chinese leaves bolted before they are fully formed. Can't imagine your lovely soil ended up with such failures..

 

[Doelman]

I think the fungal issues I'm having with my tomatoes has to do with how friable the soil is, and the fact I'm not using any kind of mulch. When it rains hard soil splashes up onto all the leaves within 8 inches off the ground, can't be good.

 

[MaryMary]

Hilarious mother nature, just hilarious.

Well... I laughed out loud!!
Doelman, we all feel that pain.

Mother Nature is a naughty teenager!

Really? I envision her as a crotchety old lady, shouting,

"Take your concrete, and get off my lawn!!"


Wild and beautiful, but still crotchety.

 

[tbendl]

Really? I envision her as a crotchety old lady, shouting,

"Take your concrete, and get off my lawn!!"


Wild and beautiful, but still crotchety.

Hahahaha now I can hear this in my neighbors voice who's always yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off her lawn