About those potato cooties, then.

I'm not really sure what happened with the potato plants that made them go from way bushy and thriving to less bushy and sucking, but there you have it.

                                                 Before                                                                            After

And since I've approached this whole potato growing thing with the lackluster methods of someone "experimenting" rather than "growing crucial sustenance", I'll admit to a certain amount of neglect.

Not that I haven't watered them, I have. I mean, the automatic sprinkler has, but the thing gets watered, so that's probably not the problem.

Here's my problem: brown leaves

But, I have begun thinking about the potato situation, as it were, and here are a few things that might have something to do with its recent decision to take its own life. Perhaps you can conjure up a rationale from these random clues:

• When it reached the top of the fourth tire, I said, "Eh, fuck it. That's as many tires as it gets. I can't be piling tires to the sky, and plus, we don't have any more tires so it's just going to have to live." So, perhaps it's stunted?
• The tires really retain a lot of heat, so maybe they're burning in there?
• When I started to feel guilty for restricting their tire allowance, I filled up the top tire to the brim with soil to give them a leeeeeeeeetle bit more room to grow. Maybe I crushed something important with all that soil?
• The soil I used was Topper leftover from Bubba's recent Master Lawn Growing experiment and I hear that has a lot of fertilizers in it so again, maybe it's burning the leaves?

Some other ideas from our cocktail hour brainstorm sessions:

• Space aliens have conspired to kill the potatoes
• Rocket did it
• The potatoes are cursed

 Any ideas you have are welcomed and I'll let you know how they fare as we go. For the record, the things are about to bloom right now, so my current plan is to continue not bothering them (ie. neglect), let whatever branches want to bloom, bloom and then when the plants die back completely, which they now have a head start on doing yay, I'll knock over the tire tower and see what's going on. 

There are still parts of this plant that want to live.

Of course, there are other evils that can be determined once you have the potatoes out of the soil, but a lot of those are bug-related and none of the bug-related symptoms I've found on the internets look anything like what's happening to these plants. And I haven't seen any bugs in, on or around these plants.

Oh, and yesterday when I thought the cause of the leaf brownage could be fertilizer burn, I went out and soaked the plants in a half-assed attempt to "flush" the fertilizer from the soil. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't expecting a miraculous rebirth this morning when I went out to check on the plants because I was.

There was no miraculous rebirth.

OK - go on and diagnose my potato problem now...GO go GO...

But first, some good garden news that doesn't involve dying leaves or cootie-carrying aliens:

My tomatoes are getting big

The beans have reached the top of their tepee and are setting their first fruit from SURPRISE purple flowers

The lettuce is positively bushy and delicious

The tomatillos are tangoing effectively

Apples, nasturtium, limes and artichokes are at the top of their game

And both cuke plants are doing what cucumbers do best: Taking over everyfuckingwhere

The melons, well, I took photos of them just because I took photos of everything else, but let's just leave it at one word: SLOW.

I also sneaked in a Moon and Stars watermelon seedling that has remained unphotographed because I keep forgetting it when I'm all enraged over WHY ISN'T THIS MUTHER EFFING JELLY MELON GROWING YET?

We're up to four leaves, folks. FOUR FUCKING LEAVES. GAH!

Ok, I'm over my hissy now. Mostly because I'm super excited about the purple podded beans (which I assume will turn purple when they're ripe? Right now they're green and the rest of the plant is purple. Weird.) and the Mexican Sour Gherkin cucumbers because they're weird *and* growing, which is how I prefer all plants behave.

So, have you figured out my potato problem yet? NO? Come on, people. What am I paying you for? Oh, right.