It’s been a while since I’ve updated the status of my home garden. I’ve been harvesting tomatoes daily now from the various plants I planted a while ago. Unfortunately, I’ve run into a ton of problems with my garden.

First, my tomatoes were being invaded by pests (see picture) and I went ahead and killed the insects by hand not wanting to use pesticides or chemicals to get rid of them.

stinkbugs

After getting rid of the insects, my tomatoes began exhibiting slits in them. At first I thought that perhaps the high temperature was splitting the tomatoes but it turns out my son caught a bird sticking it’s beak inside the tomatoes. I’m not sure if the bird was thirsty or fishing for seeds but I subsequently bought netting to keep the birds off my tomato plants.

After that, my tomatoes had rotten bottoms (blossom end rot) which was an indication that my soil’s chemical balance is off. I water the tomatoes regularly so it’s not a watering problem. I’ve added Epsom salts to try to fix the problem with limited success. Note, this problem is predominately in my planter plant while the soil plant has been producing great large tomatoes. My topsy turvy plant has been doing fairly well and has given me mid to large size tomatoes consistently.

My corn also got infected with ants and they appeared to be herding other insects for some sinister purpose (see photo). My guess is that they herded insects were extracting sugar from the corn and the ants collected their share.

ant_shepards

Unfortunately, my corn yield has been disappointing and the soil is clearly not been fertilized enough for good yield. It’s been a learning experience as this is the first year I’ve planted corn. I must say that I feel like I wasted gallons of water over the past few months watering daily only to be disappointed with the corn yield.

Anyone that thinks they can “save” money by planting a few seeds and splashing water on the plants periodically will likely be disappointed. Gardening takes a great deal of work and there can be sudden additional expenses to produce crops (fertilizer, netting, insect control, soil chemical stabilizers, etc).

I’ve probably harvested at least 10 lbs of tomatoes which we ended up sharing with friends as we couldn’t consume tomatoes fast enough before they began to rot. So with tomatoes selling for $0.87/lb at the grocery store that would translate to “saving” $8.70 but when you consider that I spent at least 20 minutes every day with the plants, probably hundreds of gallons of water, fertilizer, netting, etc there is no way that I “saved” any money doing this!

So why do it? The tomatoes I harvested are absolutely delicious! They have a flavor that you won’t ever find at the grocery store even at the “organic” section of the store. I’ve put these tomatoes on pizza, sauces, pasta, salads, and many other foods and they give food an extraordinary flavor. Ditto for the bell peppers I’ve harvested off my garden. They taste absolutely fresh and delicious but this hobby is expensive and more expensive than the grocery store.