Hi All,
Lesson learned, maybe.
This year for the first time I had reseeded tomatillos sprouting up. Two of the guys seemed rather aggressive and I was wondering if I was going to get some mutant tomatillos. But they kept getting bigger and bigger. Now I was curious. The leaves matches the pattern on my other tomatillo, but now were five times there size. And two and three feet tall.
Now I was really curious. So I got to thinking. These look a lot like sunflowers. My neighbor grew the things last year, so I wondered if he grew them again. Now I am 5'8" and the fence is 6'. I was standing back about
20 feet. He had a sunflower sticking up about three feet above the fence line. Sucker must me 9' tall! He had a bunch of others, telltale flower and all, about 6' tall.So the stinkers were sunflowers from his seeds last year! But mine were only 2' and 3' tall. Hard on the ego, black thumb and all.
Then I started to think. My neighbor imported soil from the local soil and compost place and used raised beds.
Were mine had decided to grow, was in the decorative rocks: decomposed sandstone covered for 22+ years. Some how they had found a hole in the plastic and took root.
There is no other difference between me and him OTHER than the soil. Same water, same light, same temperature, same sun, same everything, except the soil.
Do I suppose too much? Or is this a good demonstration on why I need to drastically improve my soil? (Where I have been improving it, I seem to be doing pretty well this year, so far.)
-T