Next spring when you’re jealous of my fresh tomatoes and lettuce and whatever else I might get, remember this day. See, most gardeners won’t tell you about having a 8 foot tomato plant full of juliet tomatoes that froze. When it froze, those tomatoes dropped on the ground. Under mounds and mounds of dead plant leaves and stalks. And then it rained. After that it drizzled. Then it froze again. Today it warmed up. So out I went with a very large trash bag. One wasn’t enough.

Picking up rotten tomatoes and soggy dead plants is right down there with cleaning toilets, only it’s faster to clean the toilet.

Most gardeners won’t tell you about the dark side of gardening. But here at Bear Mountain Books, we like to make sure you’re fully educated about things like Tomato Horn Worms, Spider Mites and Bad Days in the Garden.

So next time you’re wondering why those farmers at the farmer’s market have a bit of grumpy “attitude” remember the posts on this blog. They probably had a bad garden day or a fight with an 8 foot tomato plant. I can tell you who won.