A Garden Horror Story – Beware of the paint spray

I think it should be pretty obvious by this point that I have a bit of a spiritual connection to any garden or plants I may be caring for. I want a herb garden in my window year round, and I want a vegetable garden that produces enough to can and share with family. Of course, one of the benefits of gardening is that you can make it organic as well and avoid all of the nasty and harmful chemicals that end up on our ordinary store bought produce. Sometimes, no matter how well you plan, circumstance has other plans for what you want to do with your garden.

I’m not throwing blame around. We thought the garden would be far enough away, and it wasn’t. What was it too close to, you ask? Back spray of latex paint that our landlord was painting the garage with. Yes, we were previously warned. We moved the garden bags about 15 feet away. The day after it was done we go to harvest some and realized that tiny specs of latex paint are all over everything. We have tomatoes still green on the vine not going red yet, serranos just starting to finally turn red on the vine, basil with big leaves that I was going to take to dry out. All of it has tiny white paint specs on it.

I think we’ll end up cleaning it off and eating it, but I’ll never be happy when I eat it. It was likely the most non-toxic of latex paints that got on our plants, but the organicness is still ruined. I’m not a chemical expert and I’ve dug up everything I can on if it can just be washed off and found nothing. But, lets say it can be washed off. That is a lot of extra work I have to put into cleaning everything that we’re going to eat and not just rinsing them a little and soaking them in vineger and water like I have been. My anxiety makes me a bit neurotic, especially when it comes to clean food, and I’m going to comb over every inch of this food and wash it repeatedly to make sure the paint is all gone. So, this is extra work on top of processing and canning it. I’m already stretched pretty thin as far as my energy reserves, which is why there hasn’t been a post in three weeks.

Another reason I am so upset is becasue I put so much time, money, and effort into the garden just hoping for a good crop at the end of the year. We fought off every pest, bacterial diseases, blossom end rot, Michigan monsoon season (I’m not sure that was a normal amount of water) overwatering our crop, and finally we are at the end of the race in harvest time and are defeated by a swarm of man-made chemicals. I feel devestated and defeated that everything I worked so hard for is now completely contaminated. I don’t want to clean it or can it. I don’t want to look at it anymore. I want to light it on fire and never garden again.

However, there will be another garden. There will probably be some kind of harvest. I don’t really have any intention of lighting it on fire. This is afterall, what brushing yourself off and getting up is like. Maybe, I’m just going to lie here for a minute, though, and catch my breath.

Edit: The orignal post stated that they were 30 feet away, but I walked the area between and it was about 15 feet away.