Fear of a Green (Snarling) Planet

[thefourthvine]

I can't grow things. This is one of the basic facts of my life. If someone gives me a living plant, my only goal is to find someone else to give it to before my black thumb miasma begins to affect it and it loses its will to live. (Sometimes you can see our gift plants actively wilting the second they realize who their new owner is.) Our sole houseplant is one my mother gave to us when we bought our first house. It is an extremely accommodating plant, because it does not need much water, light, soil, or attention, and can survive for months apparently off of air alone. (We haven't been able to test it in vacuum, but I am pretty sure it would do fine without the air, too.) If I knew what it was, I would buy more, but I don't, so I just try to remember to water it every few weeks or so.

But last year, our neighbor across the street from our old house was offering small tomato plants for fifty cents each, and for some reason I bought some. I put them in containers we had left from previous growing experiments (the herb garden that the dog ate when she was puppy, the strawberry plants that never took), and watered them regularly, and after some time, we got tomatoes. Not a lot, but they were extremely tasty. The earthling loved them.

Then, in the middle of the summer, we moved. Our tomato plants did not survive.

In our new house, we don't have a gardening neighbor, but we do have an empty place where the pond used to be. (The previous owners had a fishpond. We have a toddler. One of our first moves was to remove the fishpond before the earthling fell into it.) We also have a sort of raised bed and a bunch of pots that used to have flowers before the old owners left them unattended for two months, meaning that we had to remove a lot of flower carcasses when we moved in.

So this year, I have planted many things, largely in a spirit of experimentation, and because the earthling likes buying seed kits. Our success has been - well. The raised bed now contains zucchini and tomatoes, and two things are obvious about it:

1. I didn't space the plants right.
   
   
2. I missed the notation on the zucchini label that said "evil, carnivorous, mutant variety, bred by mad scientists to meet your world domination needs."

The raised bed is a solid mass of greenery. Most of the individual zucchini leaves are large enough that we could sew outfits for the earthling out of them, if they weren't covered in prickles. I swear the zucchini plants move; I see them shifting out of the corner of my eye, and each day they have visibly grown. One of them appears to be trying to launch itself out of the bed entirely. The tomato plants are now pressed against the wall and growing for their lives; they are acting like vines and growing up the wall of our house, and they have grown with such vigor they've actually uprooted the trellises they were supposed to use as supports. (The trellises are just kind of floating on a sea of green, now. I would pull them out, but I think the tomato plants would fight me for them. And they'd win.) The bed, what I can see of it by cautiously poking the zucchini and tomato leaves aside, is entirely free of weeds. The zucchini plants are probably eating them.

We have given up all hope of getting actual produce from this bed (there are zucchini and small green tomatoes in there, but I have no idea how I could pick them once ripe without risk to my limbs), and are providing the plants with all the water and food they want solely because we're afraid that if we don't we'll wake up one morning to find they've broken in through the windows and taken over the living room. We also try to keep the earthling away, because I am pretty sure I've seen green tendrils reach out for him when he walks by.

Elsewhere, we have green beans, which would definitely take the Most Terrifying Vegetable award if the zucchini-tomato mass hadn't redefined our concept of fear of green matter. Even the seeds were scary - giant and bulbous - and when they sprouted, they visibly distorted their peat pots. We had to transplant them within the week, with no hardening, because they were trying to climb up the blinds, and now they defy all attempts to train them to climb up their trellis; they're basically a giant bush of bean plants. The flowers are very pretty, though, and they haven't actually tried to eat anyone, so they are definitely taking second in the scary garden sweepstakes.

Third place is held by the pumpkin plant, which seems to double in size every two days or so and at this rate will be taking over most of the U.S. by the end of the summer. I realize that this sounds like a major threat, but don't worry; there's only about twenty feet between the pumpkin plant and the zucchini-tomato mass, so before it takes over, it's going to get eaten by the mutants. Again, I am not expecting actual pumpkins to come out of this. It seems to be wholly invested in producing leaves rather than fruits.

I tell you what: gardening is a whole lot easier in Harvest Moon videogames.

Anyway. We have some other things growing - herbs and so on. We've actually managed to get some strawberries from our strawberry plants, such that the earthling, if you say, "Do you want a strawberry?" will run to the back door with his mouth open, and every day he goes hopefully to the strawberry bed and signs, "Please, more, please, more, food to eat?" But mostly we are going to count ourselves well off if we all live through this gardening experiment.

And I keep searching for gardening communities on LJ and DW, but when I find them, they're all full of posts about fully utilizing your zone 3 gardening space, or permaculture, or forcing, which sounds bad but apparently is okay if you do it to plants. There are never any desperate posts that say, "Oh god the plants - the plants - they're COMING FOR ME. What do I do? Would a baseball bat work? I don't have a flamethrower!" Everyone else seems to be sedately growing food and flowers, instead of cowering before a mutant green strike force.

But I figure I can't be alone in this. Someone else out there has to be experimenting with gardening and mostly failing, right? Right? So, a poll. (Southern hemisphere types, I realize that this is out of synch for you. Do your best.)

Poll #3272 Garden Horror

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 233

View Respondents

Are you growing or have you grown any of your own food this year?

View Answers

Yes
150 (64.7%)

No
82 (35.3%)

In terms of total volume cultivated, how would you describe your garden?

View Answers

Some herb pots by the window.
44 (23.7%)

Containers.
44 (23.7%)

Small garden plot.
81 (43.5%)

Big garden plot.
17 (9.1%)

Acres. I could feed a community off my garden.
0 (0.0%)

In terms of actual gardening skill, how would you assess yourself?

View Answers

We sow the seed, nature grows the seed, we eat the seed. I really don't see how this can be difficult.
13 (6.1%)

I plant things. They mostly grow. I'm not an expert or anything, but...
82 (38.5%)

I'm proud to say no lives have been lost in my gardening experiments.
52 (24.4%)

OH GOD HELP MEEEEEEE THEY'RE COMING.
15 (7.0%)

What's to fear? Everthing's dead.
51 (23.9%)

What should I do about my garden?

View Answers

Remain calm.
123 (53.5%)

Buy a machete.
105 (45.7%)

Buy a flamethrower.
41 (17.8%)

Salt the earth.
16 (7.0%)

Put the house on the market before the zucchini take over.
22 (9.6%)

I don't know what to say about this year, but next year, don't grow anything.
9 (3.9%)

It's totally normal to fear your garden. All the best gardeners do. Martha Stewart sleeps with an herbicide sprayer under her pillow.
82 (35.7%)

Take photos so we can know how the end of the world started.
187 (81.3%)

Comments

[neotoma]

You can pluck pumpkin flowers and use them in any recipe that calls for squash blossoms.

I missed the notation on the zucchini label that said "evil, carnivorous, mutant variety, bred by mad scientists to meet your world domination needs."

Sadly, that is the natural state of zucchini. Pick them when they're small (about the size of your hand or small), and they're pretty tender.

If you have a lot of leftover produce this year, check out ample harvest -- it matches gardeners up with food pantries, because fresh produce is rarely donated and always needed.

[thefourthvine]

There are supposed to be flowers on my pumpkin? Seriously, there are just leaves and shoots and tendrils. *eyes it*

Sadly, that is the natural state of zucchini. Pick them when they're small (about the size of your hand or small), and they're pretty tender.

We are a zucchini-loving household, and I don't know how many we'll get, so I was going to let them get a bit bigger. Maybe I shouldn't? Hmmm.

If you have a lot of leftover produce this year, check out ample harvest -- it matches gardeners up with food pantries, because fresh produce is rarely donated and always needed.

Ooo, cool. I didn't even know you could donate fresh food to food pantries; I thought it had to be cans. Shows what I know. I sort of doubt we'll have extra this year - we'll be lucky to have any, really - but I am sending the link to BB to put in her break room. Every winter, the Lemon Abandoner at her work brings in huge bags filled with lemons, most of which rot in the break room. If they could go to a food pantry, that would be better.

[florahart]

Squash plants being vines totally do get ludicrous--my dad always starts two little plants in a hill per like six or seven foot diameter and then thins the weaker one and lets the other grow, and it's still like you're going to step in there and vines will eat you.

Pick the zucchinis when they are like 6-8 inches long anyway, though, because if you wait until tomorrow they will be like 27 inches long, seven inches in diameter, and possessed of souls.

I am "growing" things this year, but you and I are of the same breed on this; I kill plants. So far my crookneck squash, and since I am way more north than you, they are still wee, seem to be okay. My basil plant is attempting to come back from unfortunate snail encounters; the oregano is mostly hiding; the marjoram right next to the oregano (and which is clearly of the same general type) appears to be considering world domination. The peas have gone bananas. The zucchini hate me and opted not to sprout, IDK why. The tomato plant is doing okay I think but needs transplanting. I am withholding judgment on the peppers.

I am going to count this all as a success as long as I get *some* foodage from *most* (more than half is most) of the plants involved.

[thefourthvine]

Pick the zucchinis when they are like 6-8 inches long anyway, though, because if you wait until tomorrow they will be like 27 inches long, seven inches in diameter, and possessed of souls.

Just to be clear: the zucchini plants will let me do this? I mean, there won't be revenge taken or anything?

I am going to count this all as a success as long as I get *some* foodage from *most* (more than half is most) of the plants involved.

That seems like a runaway success to me, yes. I hope you post photos! I would like to see some from someone who is only somewhat above my gardening competence, as opposed to the pros who hang out in the communities.

[abyssinia]

Oh, man, we always had a big garden while I was growing up and by August we were usually sure the zucchini plant was going to give up taking over the garden and just crawl over the fence and eat the neighbors. That or club us with the billions of zucchinis it was creating that we then had to find a purpose for (there's a reason much of the Midwest has a joke about "national leave a zucchini on your neighbor's porch day"). Although for sheer vindictive spikiness the cucumbers were always worse.

So, no, you're not alone. Just remember you can wield a machete and the plants don't have opposable thumbs. And good luck!

(Also, it was still snowing here last week, so we haven't even started thinking about garden plans. It's amazing to hear of someone else having full-grown plants when we haven't even turned the soil yet)

[thefourthvine]

So, no, you're not alone. Just remember you can wield a machete and the plants don't have opposable thumbs. And good luck!

...I have lost to creatures that did not have opposable thumbs before. For the record. And I am SCARED.

Also, it was still snowing here last week, so we haven't even started thinking about garden plans. It's amazing to hear of someone else having full-grown plants when we haven't even turned the soil yet

Where do you LIVE? It's, like, 85 or something here. I am ready to consider moving to wherever you are! (Someone online trying to help me with gardening issues asked me, "When is your latest frost date?" And I had to respond, "Um. I think we had frost once in 1965?")

[twistedchick]

If you want fewer zucchini *pick the flowers*. Whether you cook with them or not.

The first year my father planted zucchini, he didn't know that each plant could produce 40 zucchini. So, he planted 40 plants. Let's just say that 4'-long zucchini make great compost.

[thefourthvine]

My mother once planted a really alarming number of zucchini plants. I think she planted about 20. That was the year that some kind soul gave us a cookbook called 101 Recipes for Zucchini. I think my parents tried every one of them. So, yeah, I hear you. (That was also the year that our compost heap starting growing watermelons.)

But right now I'm just hoping to get SOME zucchini. Still, if these turn out to be vicious fruiters, it will be good to know how to make them make less.

[jenlev]

I don't have a garden...but family members do and they're fond of sharing. As for the zucchini...I've heard rumors of the adult plants building space ships. They have plans. Big plans.

PS. The really ginormous zucchini are good if sliced in half the long way, and then baked with various stuffs inside them once you've scooped out the dreaded seeds. Actually, the seeds taste good too. ;)

[thefourthvine]

I've heard rumors of the adult plants building space ships. They have plans. Big plans.

WHY ARE THESE THINGS STILL LEGAL?

Obviously, the zucchini have already secretly taken over.

The really ginormous zucchini are good if sliced in half the long way, and then baked with various stuffs inside them once you've scooped out the dreaded seeds. Actually, the seeds taste good too. ;)

Good to know. (I like how everyone is just assuming I will be up to my ass in zucchini soon. It gives me hope!)

[copernica3]

I am of the "there are a few pots of herbs on my windowsills" variety of gardener, but my mother and late grandfather always said to never ever plant zucchini or they will take over the garden, the house and eventually your neighbors will flee when they see you coming. No one likes zucchini muffins that much. (My reaction to this was "zucchini MUFFINS?! What? Why?!" "Because you need something to do with the damn things, that's why, now water the tomatoes, young lady!")
Good luck?

[abyssinia]

No one likes zucchini muffins that much. (My reaction to this was "zucchini MUFFINS?! What? Why?!" "Because you need something to do with the damn things, that's why, now water the tomatoes, young lady!")

This is why, growing up, our freezer always had zucchini bread, chocolate chip zucchini bread (yum), zucchini crisp (tastes a lot like apple crisp, seriously, but made with zucchini) and "zucchini surprise" cookies). We could feed an army all winter long. I can't stand zucchini, but I find the baked goods are fine - mostly keeps 'em moister.

[storm_petrel]

I sympathize with your garden plight. My father, the green thumb extraordinaire, has managed a huge and extensive flower and vegetable garden for as long as I can remember, including two huge greenhouses devoted to tomatoes and corn. This is in Newfoundland, mind you, where the growing season's maybe two and half months, on the outside (plan for snow outside this period).

In terms of recommendations, I can only offer what you've already figured out, zucchini plants are the devil and will take over your whole garden space. The good (or maybe scary) news is that they will likely produce zucchini in such extensive quantities that you'll be smashing them up in the food processor, adding them to everything you eat, and still have enough to carry armloads into work for your co-workers or pile them in a box at the end of the driveway to be carried off by pedestrians. You will get very tired of eating zucchini. It will haunt your dreams.

In happy tomato news, it sounds like yours are doing okay. You can make them grow taller as opposed to bushing outward by pinching off the little stemlets that start growing in the v-branches of the main stems. If you don't get a lot of natural pollinators like bees, you can improve the fruit output by 'tickling' the flowers (as Dad always called it?) and spreading the powdery yellow pollen around. A dollar-store feather duster (one with real feathers) works well for this.

Also, I suggest planting some variety of cherry tomatoes next year. These are basically the best candy in the universe.

Good luck :)

[storm_petrel]

In other terrifying garden stories, I cannot describe the brain-numbing horror that comes from emerging from your dad's huge greenhouse full of eight-foot corn stalks, and then having to sit and pick twenty spiders out of your long, curly hair.

On the bright side, it cured my fear of spiders :)

[auburn]

I said small garden plot, but it's about an acre with apple trees (twisted, mutant, resentful apple trees) and one peach tree. I expect the birds and bugs will be thrilled with the peaches this year (they were last year, I'm lucky to snag one) and I'll be foisting apples off on anyone unwary enough to come around in the fall. Maybe I should give up dressing as an Evil Stepmother and hanging dwarf figures from the fences...

I do nothing for the trees. That's my version of organic. I have given up on flowers and any vegetables because the wild pigs rototill anything I plant (except zucchini, I think even boars are afraid of those squashes). I know better than to plant zucchini. I had to get the Winchesters in for an salt and burn last time.

[stranger]

I don't care that green vegetables are supposed to be good for you. Just back away from the zucchini and no one will get hurt. I don't know why anyone grows them, since anyone in the temperate zone merely has to mention a mild squash-related need to be innundated by heaps of produce from neighbors and co-workers anxious to give theirs away. All the pumpkin/melon/squash types apparently evolved in the ice age and had to mature during a two-month growing season, or something.

Tomatoes are okay, and the home-grown taste factor is *fabulous*, but anything larger than cherry tomatoes needs full-body support.

I only grow flowers, which is why I checked "don't grow my own food" and also "large garden patch." On this, I cheat. I buy nursery seedlings, or dig up relatives' and neighbors' plants (with permission) and re-plant them in my back yard. Some of them flourish and some die. Some flourish and *then* die. C'est la vie d'herbe, I guess.

[zeborah]

I don't exactly grow things as plant them and leave the rest to natural selection. Life's too short and the supermarket's a five-minute walk away. So the herbs on my windowsill are dead again, and my vegetable garden has turned to parsley which I don't actually like, but the plum and peach trees generally give me some good fruit come autumn, and in a few years my grape vine and mandarin seedlings might fruit if they're stil alive, but we'll see.

What really annoys me are the weeds. The convolvulus in particular. And also a bush I don't know the name of, but I fill a recycling bin with it and next day it's back blocking the light from my kitchen window and then when I consider chopping it to death at the roots my colleague says "No, monarch butterflies like it!" and then I notice I do actually have lots of monarchs around and you can't make butterflies homeless, you just can't.

[axelrod]

My first full-time job was on a small organic farm. Zucchini (and yellow squash) plants are like that. Pick the zucchini while wearing gloves and possibly long sleeves. And be glad you don't have to pick A QUARTER MILE ROW OF YELLOW SQUASH THREE OR FOUR TIMES A WEEK. Zucchini and yellow squash are just about the only vegetable that I know of which I absolutely will not eat.

And congrats on getting stuff to grow! : ) And maybe choose plants based on whether they're space hogs or not next year. Chard, kale, carrots, and spinach are very well-behaved. Egg plants and cucumbers can get kinda vine-y, and cucumber plants are spiny, but they aren't nearly as big as squash and zucchini - like, you won't get lost in the row.

[in_interval]

Seriously envious here. I'm not in the least good with plants but there's not even hope of summer tomatoes here with all the wildlife. I have no idea how to foil the raccoons other than by bringing in plants at night (which is what I do with my bird feeder). We had a bear in our trash can several years ago. My plan for the next house is for it to be in a nice city somewhere.

[tevere]

What's really fun is when your plants start CROSS-BREEDING. Mutant plants of doom! My mother once planted her watermelons and pumpkins too close together, and got inedible weird things that looked like a watermelon but were pumpkin-ish inside. As well as her entire garden being taken over by sprawling vines, of course. I think the key is to really head them off before they start expanding too much -- with concrete, if necessary.

I wish my garden grew as rapidly as yours, mind. Mine gets 3 hours of sun, tops, and everything -- including the beans (I got dwarf varieties) -- is stunted like a well-behaved bonsai.

[bedlamsbard]

The other thing that can happen if you plant your pumpkins and watermelons too close together is that you can't tell which is which, in the beginning. A ripe, juicy watermelon turns out to be an unripe green pumpkin.

In my family's defense, we had just moved to the country from the city! My parents had ideas. And then came the Great Waterpumpkin Failure. Then the raspberry bush died and the deer ate the garden. On the bright side, the fruit trees are finally (ten years or so later) producing fruit! Sometimes the birds don't even eat them! Except then you have cherry pie all summer, which is bad when...you don't even like cherry pie.

[nomelon]

What should I do about my garden?

I say you take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[bluemeridian]

Last year I had a tomato jungle that was only kept from taking over the neighborhood by the tower guards 9 foot tall sunflowers that I still don't remember planting. For the first month or two that the sunflowers were growing, I thought that they were just really scary cucumbers (it's hilarious, the pictures are still labelled as cucumbers on my hard drive).

I continue to have suspicions that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Little Shop of Horrors are actually documentaries.

[copracat]

I missed the notation on the zucchini label that said "evil, carnivorous, mutant variety, bred by mad scientists to meet your world domination needs."

This will be because that the world dominating nature of zucchini plants is inherent in all varieties.

[melannen]

When I was a small child, I read a short story about a kid who spent too much time watching TV, and as a result, *grew into* the couch. There were vivid descriptions of the little hooked tendrils and green leaves where leaves shouldn't be and the tearing pain when he tried to move a limb that had rooted.

It did not cure me of my couch-potato tendencies, but it successfully gave me a terror of verdure. Especially anything with leaves bigger than my head. Or tendrils.

...anyway, our gardening method is to occasionally hoe up the clods, put down compost, scatter seeds, water a bit if we don't get any rain for a few weeks and we remember, and then if anything edible shows up, eat some of it. (The edible things are not necessarily the same things we planted. We compost kitchen garbage, but we do it with the same lack of effort we use to garden, so every year we get a few random melon or tomato or squash plants appearing unexpectedly, and sometimes they even fruit. And I'm pretty good with wild edibles, too; I can put together a full salad from the average non-herbicided lawn or roadside.)

That said, I have managed to kill zucchini several years in a row, which nobody believes. Also: raspberry bramble. We were told to kill it immediately or it would take over, but not in our yard, we can't get it do anything much year after year.

I think there are some plants that like living with people who don't understand plants, because that way they can take advantage. My family kills houseplants, or has them straggle along under torment for years, but there's this one spiderplant that's older than I am that keeps going and growing and spreading and reproducing no matter what we do and, um, would you like a spiderplant? I bet one of its offspring could survive being mailed; nothing else kills them.

[adina]

Are we related? I thought I was the only one who couldn't grow zucchini. I've managed to kill zucchini, mint, and raspberries, and I wasn't even trying.

[stultiloquentia]

We used to swaddle our zucchinis, leave them on our neighbours' doorsteps, ring the bell and run.

[polarisnorth]

... that is amazing.

[lilacsigil]

I never need to grow zucchini because everyone else in town who grows zucchini will have plenty to spare! Also, an empty block around the corner was totally taken over by pumpkin vines and yet there were no pumpkins. I looked.

As for scary gardening things, some of my tomatoes are STILL going, seven months after planting. It's winter in a few days.

[waxjism]

I'm from the country. Plants don't scare me. ::puffs out chest::

[exhausted_pigeon]

I grew eggplants this summer. I've still got a bowl of scary yellow eggplants sitting on the kitchen table.

[beledibabe]

I used to grow veg in our garden, before the deer decided that we are a McDonald's salad bar. Our garden backs up to a strip of park that runs for miles, and is a public highway for the deer. So except for a few plants I've caged, our garden only contains things the deer don't like.

Basically, we're fucked.

[domtheknight]

Do they climb over things they don't like? My parents had a deer problem, but their rhubarb plant got big enough to totally block deer access on one side of the garden. Then, they had some extensive marigolds and daffodils on the other sides, and that kept animals out enough to get strawberries and tomatoes to grow safely.

I guess it depends on how hungry your deer are, though. I suspect their deer moved on to easier pickings (not everyone knew about the rhubarb).

[sage]

I love this post SO MUCH. And I'm envying you your yard. My apartment patio garden is going pretty well, but there's nothing like having a plot of good, fertile soil to work with. When I was a teenager, I used to get home from school and go weed the garden. Sitting there in the dirt and doing nothing more complicated than yanking grass up by the roots was awesome stress relief.

[jumpuphigh]

I'm having a similar experience with a potato plant. I only have a patio so I am container gardening. I planted some sunflower seeds and when they got to be about 12 inches tall, the rabbits climbed up into the pot and ate them. *sigh* The dill seeds never did anything. However, during the course of me saying "let's see what happens", I stuck a sprouting potato in some dirt fully expecting it to not do anything. It is plotting perhaps not world domination but definitely patio domination. I have a sprouting onion in the pantry that I'm going to stick in the sunflower seed pot to see what happens. I hope the two of them will be very happy together.

[adina]

I hate to tell you this, but you HAVE to pick the tomatoes. Otherwise next year you'll have more tomatoes from all the seeds.

When we lived in California we had a cherry tomato plant against the side of the garage, in a patch of soil under the leaky water spigot. The only thing kept it from taking over the world was that it was surrounded on three sides by cement and the fourth by the garage wall. It tried to climb over the garage, but the metal roof fried it. Thank god. It died every winter, but the seeds from the previous year's missed tomatoes always regrew.