Attempts at Gardening

I have a horrible black thumb.

Every year I try to grow something, and every year I've met with repeated failures. The plants that I've shoved out in the lawn and left alone - a few crocuses, some daffodils, and a blueberry bush - have done fine. Anything I've tried to grow from seed and nurture? Withers. Rots. Gets knocked over by the cats.

Last year I had a brief glimpse of success - I had planted a pumpkin, too late in the season. I had it in a pot out on our deck. It flourished, flowered, and then froze.

This year I decided to try acorn squash, thinking that would be no problem since the pumpkin had (almost) done so well...

I started a seed in a little peat pellet indoors, then transferred it to that same pot the pumpkin had been in real quick once it sprouted. Real quick because the only places inside that are safe from the cats don't get enough sunlight, and I've had plenty of baby plants spend all their energy stretching for the light, and winding up all long and weak. Too quick because the next day, it was crushed. A bird, a squirrel, a stray twig, I don't know. However it happened, no more squash.

So then I tried planting a seed directly in the container. I'm not sure why I thought that would work any better. I waited and waited for it to sprout... then gave up and popped a few more in peat pellets. Right about the same time that the ones in the pellets came up, there was a sprout in the pot on the deck. I thought all was well and shoved the peat pellets outside on a ledge and forgot about them.

I was so proud of that little squash. It grew its first real leaves, got bigger and bigger, and I kept checking on it and taking pictures. I'd started it early enough, not too early (I live in New England) and everything was going to be great. It was a funny looking squash, but it was my squash and I loved it. Amazingly, the sprouts in the peat pellets were also still alive and growing. And they didn't look anything like what was growing in my container.

To prove it to myself, I poked around in the dirt until I found it - the little, unsprouted squash seed. I evicted the volunteer and replaced it with another of the peat pellet sprouts. 

Not a squash.

 Then, we had a few days of heavy rain. I wasn't worried, because I made sure there was plenty of drainage in the container, and my squash made it through all right. Then we had a couple of hot days, and the poor thing dried up to a crisp. Its brother sprouts in the other pellets had drowned in the rain, so I'm back to square one.

Luckily I live in a fairly rural area with a lot of native herbs for wildcrafting. I also bought some mint that's survived so far.

But I feel a deep need to be able to eat something that I've grown myself from seed. Even better would be a second generation, grown from seeds I harvested off a plant I grew. I still have some peat pellets left.

I'll let you know how it goes...

(I should probably go check on the mint!)