Two plants down

The after work gardener, Monday 30 May.

As Victor Meldrew would say 'I don't believe it!'

When I walked into my garden this evening, I was all happiness and smiles.  Picture me, carrying my new £40 fancy bistro garden furniture set from Argos, blindly thinking that I would have nothing to say in a blog, and looking forward to christening said furniture with a cup of take-away latte and a slab of homemade carrot cake.  When horror struck.  The forest of twigs, meant to keep the cats from pooing on my patch had failed me, and my little bonsai-sized pumpkin plant, that had bravely survived 2 nights outside, had been savagely scratched to nothing, and was sitting under a pile of cat poo! 

The poor little specimen, pictured left, sans poo, had suffered a hard life. In its early days it courageously survived my heavy handed over watering, shortly followed by a near fatal fungal infection. It then tolerated the humiliation of remaining bonsai sized compared to its non aquatic much bigger brother, and has finally ended its short existence  under the hind legs of next door's cat!

However, this is only one of two disasters. With an already cooling latte on my Argos bistro set, I was then to discover that there had been another death in the garden.

Having been slightly pessimistic about the amount of tomato plants that would actually make it from seed to plant, I was rather surprised to surpass my expected 3, with a record 8 plants surviving.  On Saturday, 6 of these plants were carefully re-housed in the veggie patch, whilst a further 2 were rather haphazardly relocated quite casually in two of my borders, thus furthering the cottage garden feel.

Anyway, this afternoon, after reeling from the shock of 'pumpkingate', I discovered that only 7 of the 8 tomato plants remained standing. One had suffered from what I think must be the slithering of a snail, and had been transformed from a flourishing bushy 10cm high shrub - full of potential to produce a hearty crop of 'easy-grow' cherry tomatoes - to a 5cm leafless stump.  All I can say is that I'm not sure how careful I'll be in the future about picking up snails from the pavement to save them from being trampled under foot.

Moving on.  The one good thing to report from today, apart from my bistro garden set looking fabulous, and discovering that it came with 2 more chairs than imagined, is having read Kate Bradbury's Gardener's World blog on growing sun flowers.  I have now learnt how to create my own nitrogen rich plant food from nettles, and hope to bolster what plants I have left with this organic nutritious delight.

I'll update shortly on how I get on, and let you know if the nettle plant food is effective, and more importantly,  if I can emerge un-stung from the experience.

Here's hoping for a night of no more fatalities.