Picking worms and other fun stuff.

Hi Everyone,

Today's Harvest 30 lbs.        YTD 1530 lbs.

We finally got back to the garden after a week of rainy weather. The cabbage and broccoli had not been sprayed in the interim because of the rain, and some of the plants looked pretty riddled with holes. Okay, there, I started off with the bad, but all the rest is pretty good.

Worm-eaten Savoy cabbage.

Worm pickers, er gardeners today were Susan, Jamie, Martha, Steve, Barbara and myself. Everyone immediately got busy squishing the buggers, which were not the usual green larvae from the white butterfly, but was a worm with horizontal stripes. I had some on my cabbage at home and Kay McAdams reported to me that she did too. These are new to me but seemed to inflict as much damage as the old familiar green worm. After all the plants were picked clean, each one was sprayed with Bt in an effort to kill any small remaining eggs. Although we probably lost a few plants, I believe most will survive, and some had no damage at all.

Red mustard, peppers and turnip greens.

Today we harvested some baby turnip greens, beautiful red mustard, 5 lbs. of bok choy, pole beans, 9 lbs. of Romaine lettuce, chard and leaf lettuce salad mixture, a variety of peppers, cucumbers and herbs. All was delivered by Martha to the women's shelter. We picked about a half dozen cucumbers, which looked really nice until we realized they had worm holes too. There were many more small ones coming on, so the cukes were sprayed with the Bt also.

Cabbage on the left, beets on the right, wheat grass in the front with sage and rosemary.

Last year we visited the U of M garden and really liked the pretty green wheatgrass plantings, so we put in some too, scattered about the garden. Come to the garden and bring your juicer!

The marigolds look prettier than they have all summer.

There was one more plague of Biblical proportions (exaggerated slightly)…grasshoppers, which were only on the pole bean vines. We didn't exactly know how to deal with these critters because we could have only killed a few by hand picking before they would all fly off, so we decided to leave them to eat the rest of the pole bean plants, which were done for anyway. I will check in the next day or so to make sure they haven't moved to other plants.

Herb bouquet.

Martha picked a beautiful herb bouquet of rosemary, chives, sage, chinese celery, parsley, basil, oregano and some of the nasturtiums. Our two plantings of nasturtiums made it through the summer and have now revived with the cooler weather. I have never seen nasturtiums survive a Memphis summer, so we need to save some of these seeds.

Grosso Lavender

Our two potted lavender plants on either side of the gate are starting to bloom. They have really grown and look so healthy. Nothing has done very well in these pots in the past, but I think the lavender has found a home. I got these plants this year at Spring Fling.

That's all the news from PAR Davies, where all the men and women are strong and good looking, and all the vegetables are above average.

'Til later,

Dianne