Port Potager

Last weekend I transplanted three tomatillo plants to the garden. They were looking really good: big, strong plants ready to take off out in the sunshine. Here's what we have left: Only the one on the right remains, and that one has been damaged pretty severely. The culprit? Cutworms. Their tell-tale destruction looks like this: Cutworms are the larvae of various moths. They overwinter in soil, and in the spring evenings they feed on the stems of new garden plants. They basically shear off the stem, eating a little bit near the ground and leaving the rest of the plant to die. I think I hate them most because they are so wasteful. At least a groundhog or  turkey has the decency to enjoy the whole vegetable . Some quick internet research revealed that there is such a thing as a turnip cutworm, and since we had turnips in this bed previously, I'm guessing that this is our particular pest. I noticed that some of the carrots we overwintered in this bed were ch...

At first I wanted to blame the kids for this: After all, this young broccoli plant is at the end of the row, and in a spot where balls from the yard have been known to fly. But a closer look shows some teeth marks, I think. And the there's this cabbage from yesterday: And this denuded baby bean stalk too: I haven't seen anything around except chipmunks. They are living in the perennial border and don't seem to have bothered with anything there at all. They do use a drainage pipe under the screened-in porch as an expressway to the back yard, though, so maybe they've been sneaking grocery trips in the garden without us noticing much. Looks like it's time to break out the bird netting and row cover fabric for the season. The netting worked last year on the beans, and once they were bigger, no animals bothered with them any more. Now I know what I'm doing in the garden today, I guess.