November 03, 2017
I've always liked bringing the cauliflower and broccoli heads up to the house in one piece because I'm a bit of a show off. That won't be the case anymore. Each of the four cauliflower heads that I just harvested had between 6 and 10 cabbage moth cattapillers hiding up inside. They ranged from the tiny quarter inch ones to the large inch and a quarter ones. The leaves had no caterpillars on them but lots of holes and poop, and there was no poop on the inside of the head where they were hiding. This leads me to believe that they come out at night to feed on the leaves and return to the shelter of the head during the day..
I've always found them on the leaves but it was before the heads formed and they had a place to hide. I didn't know they were nocturnal but now I realize I've never seen them moving during the day. They are usually on the under side of the leaves sleeping. All the heads will now get broken apart and washed before going housebound..
November 04, 2017
The woods smell like cotton candy and the fields like french fries. The rain has brought the return of the grasses and started the decomposition of the dead grass and leaves. The fragrances won't be so strong in December because the cold temperature slows the decay. The leaves that gathered sunlight to feed the roots are now decomposing to feed the roots. Once a tree produces a leaf that leaf never leaves it. It just keeps recycling unless some gardener removes it to enrich his coffers..
Shame on us. Making our little plots of ground abundantly plentiful in microorganisms and plant nutrients at the expense of the trees that produced the material. Shout out to the trees that help us grow healthy food. "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree" Joyce Kilmer..
November 05, 2017
Rabbits have such long ears they can hear you coming a mile away. They wait until you are in sight before they run, either because they are curious as to what the noise is all about, or because they enjoy outrunning the dogs. Rabbit scat in the garden is second only to deer tracks in potential problems. I found rabbit scat under the tomato towers yesterday. The tomatoes hanging on the vines in the house are still ripening. This will probably be the last week for them..
I put yellow tomatoes in a shallow 3" deep cardboard box, closed the lid down, and all but two ripened. I didn't have newspaper to wrap them in but it turns out that they don't need it. Unwrapping them constantly to check for ripeness and then wrapping them back up again is a pain. The cardboard box sat well on the top shelf in my closet and I could peek at them any time I wanted..
