my tomatoes are under siege

what a roller-coaster the last few days have been. before i left for KC, i had 5 tomato plants in the garden. they were doing quite well, and as the danger of frost had really passed, i decided i'd put in another. so the day before we left, i popped in #6.

2 days later, it was dead. bent over right at the soil line. peculiar.

so i put in another one. 2 days later, same problem! a cursed spot? i decided to put a plant in a different spot.

then the established ones started to go. first was the runt of my group, so i wasn't too too upset. i didn't have high hopes for its production anyway. but i emailed my friend stephanie (she works at the greenhouse), and she said: cutworms. they're moth larvae that feed on seedlings, and fell the entire thing like mini loggers in a tomato forest.

i wrapped tin foil around the base of the remaining plants and stuck 2 more in the other garden bed. this morning, one more from the infested site was gone. that leaves me 2 of my original plants and the 2 i just put in to the second site remaining.

i'm devastated! i dug up the first site looking for the offending critter, but i couldn't find it. hopefully a bird ate it already... i'm so mad!! i told mom that if i don't get a good harvest this year, that's it! i'm throwing in the trowel. HA! get it? trowel?

i think i've been a bit melodramatic about the garden lately, because today maggie laid down on the ground and moaned "i'm soooo upset!" (i asked her why though and it had nothing to do with cutworms. she said she wanted her momma!)

hopefully i'll be able to sleep tonight without nightmares about cutworms. grr!!