ACL Letter #5 - Pests Pumpkins and PTSD
Mysterious Critters in the Fall Garden
It is a bad feeling to find the seedlings you worked so hard to grow and transplanted so carefully, mauled and eaten by some mysterious critter overnight. The worst is when your seedlings are simply cut off at the base - barely hanging on. This inevitably happens to a few of my plants every year and they usually die. Last year my seedlings were a deep green one day and half eaten the next. This time it was fall armyworms that threatened my entire garden and I had to scramble to find something to keep them off. I landed on Spinosad Soap. It is certified organic and is a natural substance derived from a soil bacterium. It kills and repels quite a few insects and garden pests. It even helps cure and prevent powdery mildew. However, I try to use it as sparingly as possible simply because it does affect so many different species of insects, many of which are helpful and beneficial.
One such beneficial insect also happens to be the mysterious critter that was striking down my seedlings overnight - roly-polys. That’s right - The roly-poly, or pill bug, eats decaying plant material and helps break down debris on top of the soil. This is a good thing! But they will also eat your small seedlings. They are cute and beneficial to a garden, but they are not friends of your newly transplanted vegetables. I am currently controlling them and keeping them off of my seedlings by combining a couple of different methods. I put coffee grounds around the base of the seedlings, I periodically sprinkle wood ashes around my garden, and I spray all seedlings with Spinosad soap once after transplanting. If any seedling has been eaten at the base by a pill bug, I will spray that plant again in the next few days. So far this strategy has worked really well.
Another pest that is really annoying in the fall garden is the cabbageworm and the cabbage looper. These are two different caterpillars that come from eggs laid by a butterfly (the cabbageworm) and a moth (the cabbage looper). They are nearly identical, green caterpillars that start really small and grow to be about an inch long. To control these critters I simply walk through my patch and manually pluck them off. With time and practice you will learn to spot them and where they like to hang out. If you see green beaded clumps on your plant, that is caterpillar poo. It means you have a resident caterpillar on your plant. These insects will eat your brassicas - kale, cabbage, broccoli, Brussell sprouts, etc. If manual removal isn’t your style, there is another way to control these pests. You can use a bacterial pathogen, Bacillus thuringiensis (or BT for short) . This is a control method that is safe and offers excellent control. It is sold under several brand names.
Seeding greens upside down!
Finally Seeded my Beets and Greens!
Welp, the video is upside down. I haven’t figured out how that happened or how to switch it back. It is a time lapse of me planting some fall greens! This was done on September 30th. A bit late, but they should grow and mature just fine.
I started by using a broad fork to aerate. I then use a garden soil cultivator to loosen the the top layer of soil. To make my rows, I used a bamboo stick I had laying around. It worked great to keep my rows straight and also provided a nice indentation for my seeds.
Pumpkins and PTSD
Have you read Morgan’s latest reflection? Our family went this past weekend to buy our pumpkins. The kids love picking out pumpkins. I was ready to go home with the first 3 pumpkins I laid eyes on. That didn’t work for Mama. Or the kids. They need to touch and feel all of the pumpkins. It’s about the experience they say. I think the reflection was written for me.
Speaking of experiences, I do not like going to the market. I think it invokes some form of PTSD from my time as a grower and going to market hoping to sell the produce I worked so hard to grow, harvest, and preserve. Soon I hope to write an essay on the market farmers of my generation. It’s basically impossible to be an economically viable small farm and yet they exist. I call these people heroes. Perhaps the word “hero” is hyperbole. However, I’m not so sure.