Steamed Caterpillar Anyone?

I've found the last few months really tough, first with the exhaustion and morning sickness that comes with early pregnancy (I'm due again in October with a girl!) and lately with baby Peter's recurring ear infections and consequent sleepless nights. Although I would love to spend a lot more time in my garden, it always seems to be on the end of a long list of other chores. I think part of the problem is that I really enjoy spending time in the garden and my mother always taught me that you are only allowed to play outside when all of your homework is done. Somehow this means I spend all of my time doing the jobs I don't like to do and deny myself the ones I really love.


Lucky for me, a wonderful thing happened on Saturday. Husband Chris looked at the knee high clover in our front yard and announced his disgust at the messy looking garden. In my mind, this classified gardening as a "chore" and I allowed myself to put it at the top of the list for a day! An enormous amount of energy sprung into me from nowhere and I spent the whole day weeding, planting cuttings and cleaning up in the garden. It was wonderful to find plants under the clover that were doing well despite the lack of attention. I even had a self seeded broccoli that appeared amongst some bulbs by the back veranda post and was ready to harvest. My hat is also off to my chillies, capsicum and parsley that have all thrived on my neglect. It was the best day I've had in ages! (It was perhaps a bit much for my pregnant body because I could hardly walk on Sunday but it was worth it!)


While cooking the self seeded broccoli for dinner last night, I was all skippety-do about the day and imagined what I could put on this post about it. I had washed and cut the broccoli but some how failed to notice a family of caterpillars living in there. It wasn't until they were steamed (along with several other veggies) and on the table that I noticed them. Chris was very brave and still ate his veggies and even tasted the broccoli! I can't imagine where they were hiding in it and how I could have missed them when I washed and cut it. I've got more broccoli growing (that I planted). Is there anything I should be doing to stop the caterpillars now? Does anyone know where they were hiding while I washed it?

BUG CENTRAL

I found this great website, called Bug Central, thanks to the Cwm Goch Chronicles blog, in Western Australia, near Perth.....
"Not that type of Bugs, Kate! This is meant to be serious"
"OK, sorry, keep your shirt on!"


Bug Central was launched in Adelaide in October 2004 to provide a range of products and services to reduce the use of pesticides in home gardens around Australia. The company provides a number of good bugs that control common garden pests. For example, I have trillions of white fly and I could have sent off for some (native) lacewing larvae before the numbers got so big, which would hatch and consume bucket-loads of white fly, thereby keeping them under control. Lacewings are also predators for aphids.

This is a very effective and env. -friendly way of dealing with a pest problem if you think your garden is not yet able to counter the attack of certain pests. I find that the white fly in my garden mostly hang around on older plants which I reckon are able to survive the attack long enough for numbers of lacewings to increase and keep things in balance....I am, however, still waiting and a little disappointed that my efforts to provide habitat for such insects as the lacewings do not seem to be as good as I had thought. Bring on the cold of winter and this will see the end of both these pests pretty quickly.

Odd Tomatos

Some of my tomatoes have grown into funny shapes. Lots of them are normal but there are some freaks amongst them. They still taste good.

This is a picture of one red tomato that looks like 2 joined together. Some of the tomatoes on the same bush had sunburn and it suffered very uneven watering (in line with my bouts of enthusiasm). Lots of the tomatoes on this bush are normal.

These green tomatoes are on a different bush but the one at the front has the same kind of odd shape to it!

Does anyone know what causes it?

Broccoli surprise

Some time ago, I planted some broccoli seedlings. I didn't water them very well and thought I had lost them. However, a couple survived and even produced a flower head. One near my back door looked particularly sickly. It was so grey I thought I must have mixed it up with cauliflower. After a bit of attention (and water), it turned green and looked edible. Last night I noticed it had started to go to seed and thought I'd better eat it while I had the chance. I chopped it off and took it into the kitchen. When I cut it open, a plethora of earwigs who had made their home in the middle ran out all over my kitchen. They scurried to hide in my kitchen drawers, over the floor and amongst the other veggies I had ready for dinner on the bench. It took me by surprise since there was no sign of them from the outside. I was completely urked and didn't want to finish cutting up the rest of the veggies. I describe the horrible feeling I got as "piks et ood". (Does that sound Latin or French perhaps? It's the un-doing of the "skip te doo" feeling!) The chooks got the broccoli and the earwigs we could catch and some earwigs got washed from the other veggies down the sink but I'm sure there are still some hiding in my kitchen that we missed.

I'm hoping the earwigs invaded this broccoli because it was weak and that my other veggies in that patch will be OK. I'm also hoping the chooks will keep them in check over the rest of the garden. (They can't get into the veggie patch though). Am I being too hopeful? Should I have done something with nematodes? If yes, what should I have done / do now? Is it because I haven't done enough crop rotation in that spot?