Organic? But what about those bugs?

This past week I was admiring all that's happening in the gardens and Hoop House 1 (as I've come to call it now that Hoop House 2 is about to go up). I was admiring the bok choy with its beautiful green & white leaves almost ready to harvest; thinking about thinning the garlic and adding some to the first week's CSA boxes...and being relieved that my carrots have finally started to come up and I can see some of them. Still didn't have any lettuce up in the bed I planted a month ago, so I did a germination test. The seeds seemed ok. It must have been me: I didn't have enough water on the bed the first time around. So I replanted in another space and left the first one for now. I want to see if giving the first bed some more water will bring those stubborn seeds around!

My poor bok choy were eaten to half their original size!

This morning - Saturday - I wander into the hoop house to check on the temperature and you could have knocked me over with a brick! The beautiful bok choy were half eaten! Top to middle, the whole bed had been chewed up by insects...my cute little row of turnips, too. We won't be having bok choy in our menu this week, but I hope the organic measures I took today will allow those babies to recover by next week. Almost 14 days? We'll just have to wait and see.

This is how I hope they look when they recover

All this has me thinking about the first time we tried Bok Choy a couple years ago. The pretty little plants got to a nice 8 or 10 inches tall, and they were eaten. That first time, I just let the planting go because I didn't have anyone counting on it and we were learning a dozen other crops at the same time. Now, I'm setting my sights on finding out how to handle this and the pests that attack our other cabbage-y friends.

The better news about the veggies is that the onions, beans, peas, radishes, peppers and a handful of tomatoes are all off to a great start. On Thursday Mike and Mike laid three rows of plastic mulch in the main garden, plus one looong row of plastic where we'll grow zucchini for the food bank. As soon as the ground is dry enough to walk on we can start planting! As Scarlett said, "tomorrow is another day."