Experiments often includes failures. But failures often bear insights and improvements, right?

Last summer, we experimented with a container garden on our covered deck, an area that seemed to receive abundant summertime sunshine and warmth. We planted cabbages, lettuces, peppers, and tomatoes. I was pretty confident the cabbages would grow, since they are cold-hardy. The peppers never came around, but the tomatoes were interesting.

We started the tomatoes inside from seed, then moved them to the deck in June, but found we had miscalculated the amount of sunshine falling on the deck. As summer progressed and the sun rose higher in the sky, the warmest, brightest sunshine of mid-day was blocked by the roof over the deck. The tomato pants developed v e r y slowly. By September, the plants were a foot tall and were starting to flower. Too late to fruit, I moved the plants to our indoor garden room and hand-pollinated the flowers which then developed into fruit. Hurray!

Disaster followed.

I didn’t realize it, but the tomatoes were infested with aphids – tiny black specks were soon flourishing on all the fresh, tender hydroponic greens. My garden was ruined! I read there are about 1500 recorded species of aphid in North American! I tried a couple of strategies to combat the little beasts, but with no success. My last resort was to kill all the plants, to move any potted plants back outside, to fully sanitize and deep clean the hydroponic garden and to start all over again.

Now, fresh seeds have sprouted and new plants are growing in the hydroponic garden without any signs of pests. No outside plants will mix into the hydroponic room ever again! Lesson learned.

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