I spoke too soon

Image by mrcd@sbcglobal.net via Flickr

Remember how I was JUST saying last week that my garden was doing so much better than last year? Well... Friday I came home from work to realize that my cauliflower looked as though it had been through a grinder. It was all chewed up! When I got closer, I realized that it was little leaf colored wormies having a feast on my garden! I started to pick them off one by one, with the hens standing just on the other side of the fence. (They love it when I have garden troubles because I inevitably end up putting things down their gullets, like little green wormies). There were just too many to pick off! I am a NEW gardener. This is the second garden I have ever had in my entire life so you can imagine my panic!. I grabbed the Sevin that I happen to have around the house because I have chickens, and I doused them.

I know... it was pesticides...

But I had to!

Then I moved on to the rest of my garden for inspection. The potatoes look very bad. In just 1 day they went from looking full and having flowers, to looking like they were dying out. Since I am a new gardener, I am not smart and I did not save the seed bag so I am not sure if i planted "early" potatoes or not and I wasn't sure if they were close to harvest. So I ran back in the house to the internet and read that I could carefully dig to see if there are any mature taters.
Sounded easy...
I dug to china.
Never having successfully grown potatoes, I had no idea really where to look for them.
I eventually found a tiny little potato, and it was (laugh) surprisingly close to the actual plant lol.

I filled the holes back up, did a little "please live a few more weeks" jig, and moved on to my garlic which also looks very sad and dead/dying.
I pulled one

these I know should be ready, they were planted back in October after all.

but alas, smaller than a ping pong ball yet the plants are dying rapidly.

I think the rest of the garden is ok. I have one cherry tomato plant that is so full of green maters that it just may keel over :) (dont worry I do have it in a cage its not going to fall over)