Win, Lose, or Get Creative

Sometimes gardening, like politics, is the art of compromise.

Our cabbages have been under constant attack from every pest known to woman throughout the spring and summer growing season. Cabbage worms, harlequin bugs, and slugs have been the most destructive, with rolypoly bugs sometimes joining the fray.

Now that the bugs and slugs have had all summer to multiply and establish themselves, its been getting downright dangerous to be a brassica in our cabbage patch.

We have harvested some nice big heavy cabbages (as you can see in my last post) but the nail-biting question of whether the pests or the gardeners would triumph finally got to be too anxiety-provoking for me and I looked for a "third way." After managing for months to fend off armies of small creatures who like cabbage as much as I do, I finally gave up and decided not to wait until all of the cabbages are "normal" cabbage-sized. I've never been too interested in normalcy anyhow.

So I harvested a bunch of tiny cabbages yesterday. One of the smallest is pictured at the top of this post.

Baby cabbages make perfectly fine cole slaw and kraut, I've discovered. They are nice and tender, and just darn cute.

Here's an approximation of the slaw recipe that I use:

Classic Cole Slaw

Ingredients

• A bunch of cabbage of any size (about 4 cups chopped)
• 4 or 5 good-sized carrots
• 2-4 Tbs. of raw apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbs. of honey
• Mayonnaise to taste (I use about a cup per four cups of chopped cabbage)
• 1 tsp. high-quality salt
• Lots of freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Finely chop cabbage and carrots. I use a food processor for this, but you can do it by hand.
2. Mix everything together in a big bowl.
3. Chill in the fridge, allowing the flavors to meld for at least 30 minutes before serving.
4. Enjoy!

Cole Slaw on Foodista:

Fat, beautiful parsleyworm...and some less desirable garden vistors

Watering the garden this evening, I came across this beautiful creature (at left) in the towering fennel.

Thanks to the internet, I was able to perfom a quick google ("fat black yellow striped caterpillar") and discover that s/he is a parsleyworm, which is actually the caterpillar stage of the black swallowtail butterfly.

Thankfully, I did not squish before googling. After attending "Bug Church" at the Organic Growers School, I know better.

It turns out that they don't eat much and really don't affect the health of their host plants unless the plant is already weak or there is a major infestation.

In any case, this caterpillar was gorgeous. And really fat. I wonder if s/he will make it to butterflydom or get eaten by a bird first? Apparently they have "a forked, glandular process behind the head that can be everted to emit a strong odor distasteful to predators." (Arthropod Museum Notes.)


So after the photo shoot, the parsleyworm went back to her normal life and I moved on to finish watering and weeding.

A few minutes later I came across a spotted cucumber beetle and then some eggs that turned out to be cucumber beetle eggs (see below). The spotted and striped cuke beetles, tied for second place most despised insect in my life (after the mexican bean beetle), were swiftly executed (squished, drowned in steeping compost tea - what a way to go).

Cabbage worms

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of Christopher in his pajamas in the garden catching cabbage moths with a swimming pool net. So far, our haphazard methods of cabbage moth/worm control have been limited to Christopher's antics with the swimming pool net and my pick-n-squish endeavors with the larvae.

Nonetheless, we're not noticing too much damage from the larvae -- cabbage worms -- yet, but we're vigilant because there are lots of the pretty white moths (pictured above) around and we have created a very enticing brassica buffet of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, various kales, and collards.

While amusing to our neighbors, the pool net method is probably not good enough to keep down the cabbage moth damage through the season. And the plants are doing so well that pick and squish is getting to be a time-consuming chore. Most organic pest experts recommend spraying with BT to kill the larvae. Here's a great gardening blog--veggiegardeningtips--with a post on cabbage worm control, for example.

We'll see if we resort to BT....it's looking likely....but I'll probably also try planting dill around the brassicas, which is said to repel both aphids and cabbage moths. Even if it doesn't work, it's beautiful, attracts beneficials, and we'll use it for pickles, potato salad, sauerkraut, and other delights. See the wiki companion planting entry for more on dill and other companion plants for pest control.