Sometimes failure can be success

So. I am dense. In spite of all that I read, it never occurred to me that topsoil would not be good for plants.
The topsoil like you buy at the box home improvement stores.
Or Walmart.
But it's true. All topsoils are not created equal, and they are not good for a lot of plants. How did I manage to learn this?
The tomato plant that we have gets blossom end rot before the tomatoes ripen.

To give you further information, I know I mentioned the bucket gardens. Well, I've learned that while broccoli and brussels sprouts don't like heat, they don't like freezing temps either. While I managed to keep them alive, they did not do what I would have liked and had pretty much gone to seed by the time we got back from the farm in February.

So, into the composting pile they went and I bought some seed potatoes from Walmart. Because it's here where I live and not 30 miles away.
I experimented with buckets and a raised bed. Some of the seed potatoes went into buckets and some into the raised bed. They seemed to grow really well, lots of vigorous green leaves, and I thought 'cool'.
But then the leaves began spotting. A lot. And dying off.
I looked it up on the internet, and it was some sort of disease that was especially susceptible by a variety called Red Norland.
And what did Walmart sell?
Yes. Red Norland. By the time we got back from the farm in May, all 7 plants had died off completely.
You see why I say I have a black thumb?

Anyway, in an effort to save the tomato plant and get it some soil with more calcium in it, I decided to get some fruit and vegetable dirt. I dumped out the dirt from one of the buckets that the potato plants had been in and refilled it with the other dirt and moved the tomato plant. Probably not the wisest thing to do, but since I'm losing tomatoes anyway, I figure it's worth a try.

But the 'success' I spoke of? Guess what I found in the buckets.

Guess.








That's right. Potatoes. :-)

Only one was really of any size, but I don't care. Made me smile. :-)
Those of you who know about potatoes, should I have left them in the dirt longer? Would they have gotten any bigger? Or did I do right to search them all out since the plants were dead?
Just curious.

So yes, even though I thought I failed with the potatoes, I sort of succeeded.  :-)

Now to see if I can save the tomato plant....

And we went fishing this morning. Caught a half dozen nice pan fish. I'm thawing the fish we caught before we went to the farm and we'll fry them up for dinner tonight. Fish and potatoes, too. :-)

Happy Saturday, everyone!