Quite Contrary

Look, it's my garden!  Oh, wait.  No it's not. :-(

A few years ago, Ben and I decided we would put in a raised vegetable garden.

Well, maybe I decided HE would put it in.

But I don't remember him protesting, really.  Or perhaps I just ignored it.

At any rate, he built these beautiful raised beds - one one season, another the next - so that we could grow our own little veggies and be like these urban pioneer homesteaders.

That year, we had a pretty decent harvest.  Millions of cucumbers and five millions of cherry tomatoes and all I really wanted were some squash - all of which perished for reasons unknown.

The next year the harvest was once again bountiful as many of the tomatoes inexplicably came back on their own and we had yet more cucumbers and this time even a few squash survived.  The herbs were off the chain.

I thought surely once we conquered whatever was killing our squash, we would be ready to have our own mini-farm.

This year has been different.  I found out that doing it on my own is a little overwhelming.  I picked just a couple of tomatoes and a couple of peppers, along with some basil and other herbs, to plant.

I didn't prepare the soil or do much except weed the beds; I wasn't sure what else TO do.  My cilantro had come back on its own, as had my rosemary.  Storms were coming in and I wanted to make sure everything was firmly planted before the rain started. 

That was April 27.

I suppose I should just consider myself blessed that the storms we got were babies compared to what hit in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama that day.  And maybe planting on "killer tornado day" was some sort of bad omen for my garden.  Maybe there is something in the Farmer's Almanac about planting on funnel cloud Wednesdays or something like that and since I don't read the Farmer's Almanac, I didn't know.

But what I do know is that my basil was devoured by something before it could even reestablish its root system.  I went out the next day and poof, all stems.

My tomatoes gave it a good try, but in the end, I only harvested about 8 tomatoes, all roughly the size of a golf ball. 

My bell peppers were teensie, too.

The only thing that seemed prolific this year were my blackberries, and a-hole birds ate all of those.

So what do I do?  Do I give up on my dream to have my own mini-farm??

I bought some books about small-scale farming - you know, all about hobby farming, urban homesteading, etc.

BUT WHEN DO I HAVE TIME TO READ THAT?!?!?!?!?!?

I am accepting any and all advice from the green-thumbed among you.