As the Garden Grows (episode 3)

On today's episode, we see what happens when the garden is neglected for a full week. Will it ever recover? Watch and find out..




The final week of school, I was far too busy to spend any time in the garden, and then we were out of town for three days, so nature did her best to reclaim our little plot of land. She works at an accelerated pace here in Florida, anyway, so in a week's time we had weeds everywhere, that were at least knee high. The bamboo trellis had begun to rot and fall apart, as well.

Every insect in the area, seemed to have moved in during our absence. I have been complaining, that while other gardeners have a rainbow of fruits and vegetables this time of year, we have a rainbow of bugs.





Not everything needed my constant attention to thrive, though. The green bean vines are doing a fine job of covering the little bamboo hut, we have lots of tiny tomatoes, and will soon have broccoli.





After two days of weeding, things were starting to get back under control.



We even had our first real harvest:



Blaze and I treated ourselves, for all our hard work, by having our first little fire in the new fire pit we built.



Then today, I received the following e-mail:

"Last night at 7:30 a reclamation pipe near our gardens became disconnected. I called the police and they said they had already ordered shut off. However, the pipe drained all night until 8:45 this AM and flooded the road and the first three rows of gardens. Our gardens were flooded, at least 1/2 way up my beds. I met with Dr. Clark at 9AM (for something unrelated to this incident) and informed him of the occurrence. He said he would notify gardeners about this since reclaimed water is not water fit for garden use/consumption in this form. He hasn't sent anything and think it is important that at least you know. The flood extended at least half-way towards our water pump. Seems we lost our crops. Reclaimed waters from golf courses are particularly high in toxic material."

I'm hoping that the thunderstorm and heavy rains that are happening right now, are washing away all of that contaminated water, but I know so little about this subject.