What A Difference A Year Makes

OMG!  that's right...OMG!  What was I thinking?!  A couple of months back I started oh, gee about 100 OR SO seedlings. I figured with my green thumb NOT! that only one seed would actually turn into a plant. The other 99 were insurance.

Well, as luck should have it,  keeping the seedlings next to my bed, reading bedtime stories about other garden success and descriptive passages out of the Western Garden Book of what each should look like...you know, my version of affirmative action, piped in music, perfect light 16 hours per day, a gentle move to the larger set up in the greenhouse with the grow lights...  I had 99 plants...one died...oh well...maybe he couldn't take the pressure.

However basking in that somewhat limited success created a much larger problem. Where the hell do I plant all of these pippy upstarts in my now not-looking-so-big vegetable garden?  While pondering that I found myself in the parking lot of Tomatomania, a tomato fanatics candy store. Hundreds , no thousands of heirloom tomato plants...all screaming in their wee tomato voices, 'pick me! pick me!'  And so I did.  Home I came with my flat of tomato plants. Didn't even cross my mind to count as I was choosing....  Not thinking for one instant  that back at the ranch I had two in the ground already, one that had rescurrected itself, two in the greenhouse growing out of control and bearing fruit in March and oh yes, the other nine seedlings - that didn't die.  Not problem I thought. I'm going the intensive garden route.  Yeah right, there Ms.GreenThumb.

So after a couple of days wringing my hands and a couple of evenings soothing my panic with  a martini while sitting in the greenhouse and wondering how to negotiate more yard space  I called on the terrific Christy Wilheim of GardenNerd.  I thought better that than a round at the Betty Ford.

  We made a date and it was like a load had been lifted off my shoulders.

As soon as she arrived she started counting....16.....17...18....19.....oh my!

 You have 20...no 21 tomato plants here!  Oh really, I said ...like I knew that... NOT!

And you have 4....5....7.....10....squash...and how many peppers...10  oh and 4 eggplants.  OK. Well then. Our work is cut out for us!

Sigh

That's what I love about her.  She uses the word 'us' even though she will go home to her absolutely beeeutiful garden leaving me behind to make this one work.

We gave up on the celery, found homes for most of the tomatoes.  The strawberries will remain intact, the okra is OK where it lives, the parsely and cabbage are good along with the tomatillos that are already flowering.  There's still lettuce in the ground that really should be eaten this week and that will open up space for a couple tomatoes. Oh My.  I just know my wish for abundance in the garden is on the verge of busting into my universe and I will experience my own version of tomatomania - although more like tomatomaniac!

I offered that I was OK with sacrificing the squash since I really need some space for cucumbers and radishes and celery....oh my!  I felt a bit like a serial killer of sorts, but then again...what a little sacrifice for the good of the whole. It's a bigger picture way of thinking.

I also figured, hey...last year my crop wasn't exactly bumper...if you get my drift.  So what the heck...one or two will survive and the rest are insurance!

Stay tuned.