It is a hot one today. Great day to write a newsletter.
This week I will focus on pests. This year we are inundated with pests. Absolutely overrun. Completely saturated. Just like last year and the year before that and every previous year. There are a lot of pests every year. The way we farm we do not try to eliminate every pest, though that would be a wonderful thing. It is difficult to kill many pests organically. Instead we try to take measure to reduce the damage to the plant so that it is still able to produce the vegetable. I think this is better than constantly spraying insecticide – whether organic or not. Even organic pesticides kill unintended bugs like honey bees.
Let’s look at a couple of the more recent pests.
The first one to mention is the Corn Earworm. Why are we mentioning this first? Because we found some on the corn we harvested last week. This is worth mentioning for two reasons. One, you might get some in your corn. Two, we’ve never seen corn earworms this early in the season. We generally see them in mid-August. One method for reducing the impact of corn earworms is to have all the corn harvested before they arrive. We frequently harvest the first and sometimes second planting before we see them. Not this year. We planted the corn weeks earlier to try to have our fill of sweet corn before the earworm moths arrived. But it was not to be. Last year we started harvesting corn on August 4th. This year we were about two weeks earlier. But the earworms are about four weeks earlier.
Earworms are hard to control. They are the larvae of moths who lay eggs on the silks of corn ears. When the eggs hatch the larva crawl into the ear and start eatin’, with no evidence outside the husk until they’ve made a complete mess of the place. Spraying insecticide on the corn does no good since the earworm is protected by the husk. The worms are susceptible to a type of bacteria that is commercially available but it is difficult to get the bacteria to where the larva are partying, inside the husk. So we put up with a little earworm damage. For on-farm pick-up, if you are squeamish about bugs we will gladly open up the husk for you to ensure there are no earworms. We generally check the corn going into the boxes but sometimes a few slip past.
The second pest to mention is an old pest but new to a particular crop. The pest is deer. We’ve been fortunate in deer not consuming many of our vegetables over the years. The one exception up to this year was the artichokes. You may notice we do not grow artichokes anymore. That is due to deer and their insatiable appetite for artichokes. This year we have at least one deer that has developed a taste for beet greens. Talk about frustration. The deer grabs the beet greens and pulls up. If the beet comes up with it the deer just leaves it on the ground and goes on to another bunch of beets. We find beet roots scattered among the beets whose tops are missing.
One control for deer is the neighbors across the street who hunt each fall. Even if they reach their quota I don’t think it would keep up with the new ones born each year. Our second method of control is speeding cars down Oakgreen. This has taken care of some of the problem but does not provide complete control. Anyway, the purpose of mentioning this is that you may get beets without tops. But the tops didn’t go to waste.
Another pest to mention of late is the cabbage looper. If I were a pest I’d want to be known as a looper. What a great name. Anyway, the cabbage looper is the larvae of a moth (moths are the mosquitoes of the farm pest world). It lays its eggs on the brassica family of vegetable plants – cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli are its culinary favorites. Being the larva of a moth it is susceptible to BT, the bacteria mentioned earlier. On the positive side brassicas do not come with husks to hide under. On the negative side the loopers like to hang out on the underside of the plant so spraying from above can miss some of the targeted loopers. But since the insecticide works if it is ingested the looper only has to eat through a leaf to get BT in its gut. So spraying can be effective, except for years where it rains a lot and often. Since it has rained a lot and often you may stumble across a looper or two in your broccoli or cauliflower. Soaking the vegetable for an hour or so generally kills the loopers and they fall to the bottom of the bowl.
Let’s see, I already mentioned Colorado Potato Beetles and Flea Beetles in earlier posts so we can skip these. Oh, and I mentioned the raccoons propensity for sweet corn last week (hope you like to share your corn!)
Another pest we have is a mysterious creature that eats our tomatoes. It must not be very tall since it eats only low hanging tomatoes but it must not be colorblind since it only eats red tomatoes. We may have to set-up a motion detecting camera to capture the beasts.
I think we mentioned the squash bugs and cucumber beetles in an earlier posting. I didn’t mention the cabbage worms since they are pretty much equivalent to (but not the same as) cabbage loopers and looper is a much more fun word to say than worm. However they are the offspring of the cabbage butterfly (the ubiquitous white and yellow butterflies).
Speaking of butterflies, one pest we try to encourage is the larva of the Yellow and Black Swallowtail butterfly. It likes to eat plants in the Umbelliferae family (carrots, fennel, dill, parsley, etc.) Since the butterflies are pretty cool we figure we should try to help them out instead of kill them. So if we find them we pick them off and put them in a jar with plant material from the umbelliferae family. In the future if you are lucky enough to find one of these on your fennel feel free to do the same. In a few weeks it will turn into a cocoon and a few weeks later it will emerge as a beautiful butterfly.
There are plenty more pests we could discuss – leaf hoppers for instance – but that’s enough pest talk for now.
So what are we expecting to harvest this cycle? Well, we should have beans, corn, broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, some cauliflower, peppers, some eggplant, some tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, summer squash, and cucumbers. These are mostly warm season crops, go figure.
There are Eggs and Flowers this week. No cheese, no fruit and no meat.