What a fall

I tripped in the garden and took down two cages of tomatoes. I fixed the cages and rearranged the tomatoes. I know they will be all right in a couple of days.

It was a shock to the plants and me. I just am not that steady on my feet since the back surgery and it is difficult for me to do what I love the most. I need to order the handle for my garden cart, so that I can take my garden seat to the spot I need to sit and work in an easier manner.

To tell you how healthy these plants were, I took the pieces that broke inside and put them in water to root with a product I have used a long time and it is called Rootblast. I put about a teaspoon of this stuff in water and stuck the tomato pieces in the bowl. Those little hairs that stick out on the tomato will become roots and this is a method of creating additional transplants.

Today, the pieces of tomato plants are well on their way to becoming my next tomato plants. I intend to add six more boxes to my garden to make it a total of a 900 square foot equivalent garden. On our trip, my girl friend had a sweet potato that had eyes (or slips) growing and I can not tell you how much I want to try growing my own sweet potatoes, so I brought the poor little sweet potato home and it is getting ready to be cut up and planted in the garden.

Now, the Rootblast plant additive is a great product. I told a client about it and brought him a brand new 20 ounce container of this stuff. You are supposed to use a quarter of a teaspoon of this product per season per plant. He used up the whole 20 ounce jar and he had roses (his favorite plant) that grew as large as a dinner plate. He even had the photo to prove it.

The next summer, he loved the product so much, he ordered a forty pound bucket of Rootblast for his garden and yard and then proceeded to use the entire bucket. I offered his wife a machete to hack her way out of the back door because I could visualize her locked in her home with plants keeping her from getting out the back.

A gardener who loves his or her garden always has to experiment and each year I try new products or new types of plants. Without experimentation there is no advancement.
That means gardeners who read about and try different methods to see if it meets their needs. Over the summer, I will introduce you to some of the things I have tried and found successful.

Remember my friend with the Rootblast, we discovered the sweetest smelling roses have the most thorns. You can not have beauty without something that is a distraction. And you can not have advancement without failure.