What a Waste, Nothing Wasted
I started gardening this past summer. The new addition expanded my not-so-short list of existing, ongoing hobbies. A sample of the hobbies include writing, climbing, programming, design, and longboarding–yes, incredulous reader a sample.
The anticipation and then initial entry into a hobby is a mixture of excitement, fear, and thrill of discovery. And experiences are a guaranteed outcome of the processes involved. One particular gardening experience provided a Zen-like insight.
One plant in the garden, a yellow-pear tomato plant, was especially prolific in the poor, clay-heavy soil of my northern Illinois suburb. Inattention resulted in a few yellow-pear tomatoes becoming ripe or over-ripe and falling of the stems. The fallen fruit were quickly eaten into by insects and/or became spoiled. Frustrating. What a waste!
Ideally, one would have liked these to never have gotten to this point, but in my limited gardening experience some yield of fruit and vegetables regardless of attention meet this fate. No matter! Even these tomatoes will not go to waste. They contain perfectly good seeds which can be used to start plants next year, and the spoiled fruits and vegetables can be buried a foot into the ground to become nutritious compost. Aside from salvaging the lost fruit, there were lessons. First, to more carefully inspect the crops on a regular basis to ensure less vegetables or fruits are missed and go bad. Second, ensuring the plants have proper support and can grow vertically, which would increase visibility of fruits that are ripe, simplify picking, and might increase yield.
Nothing wasted: seeds saved, compost made, lessons learned, and lessons shared.