Tag: cabbage moth

More Brassicas, more problems, more heat.

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 2 Comments

Well it cracked 90 today here in the sunny Excelsior and I felt like I was going to melt out of my shoes.

Had to do some mid-day emergency watering, which is always fun at noon. Then once the sun wasn’t so high in the sky I did some planting and an even deeper watering that meant I was out until literal nightfall. At least a summer night is pleasant, even though the mid-day temps were brutal.

Kohlrabi! Now this, unlike the Brussels sprouts, is a veggie I’ve grown before. It’s actually pretty easy, and is one of the real fun brassicas. If you’ve never eaten one before give it a try at a farmers market or a really good supermarket, it’s weird looking but tasty.

Unlike the head of cabbage or broccoli, the edible part of a kohlrabi is it’s swollen stem and the leaves. Since it’s not a root veggie like a turnip, I shouldn’t have to worry about the horror that is cabbage maggots.

Easy peasy, just put my seven little plants in a row in front of the sprouts!

Unfortunately the sprouts themselves look a little rough. The heat has done a number on them, though the new growth in the center looks promising. Nothing some deep watering and good mulch can’t fix.

That and as we go into fall, cooler temps.

The caterpillars however, a being a pill.

See that white dot? That’s an egg! My sprouts were riddled with them. I picked off what I could see, and then it was time to spray.

I’m just not going to fool around this year.

I also moved my tree collard over by the other brassicas, and gave him a fresh coat of B.t. as well. I got my first harvest out of him, and boy are collard greens delicious.

I’m having to move a lot of things around, as the season starts to change. So of course my latest garden map is now out of date. Oh well.

I’ll leave you with my neighbor’s barking corgi, who serenaded me all evening long as I gardened. He apparently had something important to tell me as I worked, but as I don’t speak dog it was incomprehensible.

He’s quite cute though.

Pepper problems

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

So at this point I have two established pepper plants, a lipstick pepper and a Italian Bull Horn pepper. The Lipstick has some nice fruits, so I thought it was time to pick a few.

Look at those nice big green peppers. Now lipstick peppers are generally picked at the red stage, but even with our heat wave there is no guarantee they’ll get that ripe, and I just wanted to check for texture anyways.

Quality control!

One of my local ladies was chilling on the plant, which is always nice to see.

Right. So three nice green peppers. One minor problem- there was a small hole in the top of one of them. Might as well cut it open just to make sure right?

Fuck cabbage moths. Just… I hate those little bastards so much. Needless to say this pepper ended up in the compost.

Also- since when do ‘cabbage’ moths eat peppers! ARGGG.

Well It’s a good thing I bought B.t. for the tree collard. Turns out I’m going to have to use it for the dang peppers too because life’s not fair and caterpillars suck.

In the end the peppers were ok but too bitter. I’ll try to let the rest ripen, or make sure to cook them first. It’s ok- these were picked as quality control, so it’s ok that they weren’t perfect.

But seriously I hate cabbage moths.

 

Cauliflower woes

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

I had to pull another cauliflower today- and yeah, maggots on the roots. The plant came up really quickly too- like it was barely alive.

And that’s not even the only bug on the plants.

Ah good old cabbage moth. Or cabbage moth caterpillar anyways. They’re hard to see most of the time- this was the first one I managed to kill this year.

It gets worse.

In the folds of the leaves were an absolute mountain of aphids. I smushed what I could- and I’ll spray some horticultural oil in the morning.

Honestly after pulling the weakest one, I thought I’d just pull them all, and just chalk it up, maybe sow some spaghetti squash.

Only… the largest cauliflowers weren’t so weak rooted. A light tug was all it took to uproot the dying ones, but the big boys are firmly rooted.

I’m not stupid, I know there has to be maggots on these roots too- but maybe the neem oil pours I did last week worked in reducing their numbers? One or two maggots don’t hurt the plant- a zillion do. I just pulled a few of the Bok Choy for tonight’s supper and there was one maggot between them. So they’re around but not causing too many problems, except what they did to my turnips and what they’re doing to my cauliflowers.

I’m hoping with all the other cabbage family crops in the garden that this is the worst of it.

But they remaining cauliflowers do look good- if buggy.

Now the problem is… it’s going to rain again. Which might bring out more flies and more maggots.

Ah San Francisco. Growing things here is so tricky sometimes.