Gazing out to the garden the other week I spotted the first Cabbage Whites of the year. These innocent-looking little butterfies gently fluttered in and around the vegetable plot, but I know from past experience how much utter carnage they can create in the blink of an eye.
As I clocked them, I made a mental note to be totally ahead of the game this year. Instead of watching my cabbage patch get munched by very hungry caterpillars, I decided to be one step in front, and destroy the eggs before they even had a chance to hatch. Cabbage Whites lay clusters of tiny yellow eggs, normally on the undersides of brassica leaves. Whizzing off down the garden to execute my plan, I eagerly began systematically turning each leaf over in my search.
Imagine my dismay to find that I’d been out-scuppered by the little blighters. They’d evidently sneaked in to the patch without me noticing, and the eggs I was looking for were now miniscule caterpillars. In their droves. All over the plants. And I had not got a chance of finding them all. I then decided that the next logical course of action would be to spray the brassica plants to kill the bugs. I’m not normally a fan of insecticide, knowing I’ll be eating the end produce at some point, but in this case I had little option. But before I’d even had a chance to nip out and get some, I noticed something else was amiss. A closer look at the broccoli plants revealed not only munch-holes in the leaves, but something else was going very wrong with the actual heads that were forming. I can only assume this has something to do with the freakishly hot weather we’ve been having, but the heads that had started to form beautifully were now looking decidedly sick and wizened. And certainly not fit for the table.
Err… I don’t fancy that for my tea
There was nothing for it, so dejectedly I cut off the manky heads and the worst affected leaves, which became free food for the chicken run – complete with extra protein. In the joins between the leaves and the stem it looks like more little heads are forming, so I’ll leave them alone for now and see if they grow into anything half-edible.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. On the up side, the runner beans have caught up marvellously, and I have the first tiny beans beginning to form. The French beans have their first flowers, and the pumpkin plant I bought earlier in the year has begun snaking its way towards the bottom of the garden. A friend gave me some pea plants a week or so back, and these too are looking fine and dandy. So if nothing else, we should have plenty of beans and peas to eat.
