Saturday, February 28, 2009

Shovel-ready blog

Well, there's been a flurry of activity over in my backyard, thanks in large part to an open weekend and lovely weather. I finally got to go out to enrich one swath of the back garden that's been neglected for a while - three bags of compost and three bags of manure, graciously spread for me by my awesome husband. Thanks, babe!

Add to that the planting of 150 sweet yellow onion sets, weeding approximately 225 square feet, deep-feeding the overwintered vegetables (which are doing great! more in another post soon), and planting radishes, daikons, shallots, leeks, Brussels sprouts, hamburg rooted parsley, and parnsips, and I'd call it a very productive afternoon in the garden.

BUT...I'm already seeing harlequin bugs, which frustrates me.

http://www.pbase.com/tmurray74/image/84867830

Seems a bit early...Also spotted two of the dreaded white "butterflies" that indicate cabbage worms to come. Perhaps our relatively mild winter was too mild!

http://web2.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/mwvr/viewreport.php?action=entire&issue=13&date=2005-08-19

In any case, I'll have to watch out for them this year. Last year they pretty much devastated my cole crops. The snails were also a problem and I've been saving and crushing my egg shells all winter to make a homegrown version of diatomaceous earth. Don't know if it will work, but it's worth a shot!

I am very pleased with how everything has overwintered so I'm excited to write more about that and include pictures...soon!

3 comments:

Peak Oil Hausfrau said...

I've seen the white butterflies around my kale, too. Lucky they are big enough that they won't be killed right off... maybe I will have time to harvest them first.

How do you deep feed your overwintered veggies?

Lewru said...

I just gave them a long, long soak of fish emulsion...stinky goodness!

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