When I arrived home yesterday I found that some major damage had occurred in my garden. I have no idea what happened. Perhaps we had some really hard rain or an animal (wild or unleashed pet) was running around loose in our yard.

One of my tomato planters (w/ the tumbler tomatoes) was knocked over. I lost about 6 tomatoes (of the tumbler - which are just slightly bigger than cherry tomatoes) but the plants themselves were OK. Whew.

Then continuing through the garden I noticed 3 corn stalks knocked over! Luckily the stalks were not broken, just bent. So I bent them back up and added some extra dirt around the bases for extra support. But I have a feeling that I'm going to continue to have this problem. I may need to add an extra layer of dirt to the entire bed to stabilize the stalks. I guess I could stake each and every stalk with a bamboo stick, but that may be a bit excessive. I've already lost about 4-6 so far this year due to the stalks breaking - again either from a hungry or rowdy animal.

So I thought everything turned out OK, but then I took a look at my yellow zucchini. Oh No! The stalks of one of the plants was snapped 3/4 through at the very base!

Now I do have an extra yellow zucchini plant (each 'plant' is really two. I have two yellow planted in a group, and two green planted in a group.) but I was very upset. I decided to try to save it. I ran and grabbed some rooting hormone and applied it liberally to the break. Then I mounded dirt over the whole base of the broken stalk, and gave it a really good watering. Here's after my 'patch':

I hope that it will survive, although I'm doubtful. But this morning when I went outside the plant still looked OK - no wilting or limping, and the flowers were wide open and being enjoyed by bees. So maybe it will pull through. Only time will tell.