Yesterday we were asked at our Bible study what our favourite vegetables were. And then to tell a story about that vegetable.
There was some discussion about whether tomatoes counted. We allowed it for this purpose.
The most disturbing story for me was about brocolli. I grew brocolli for the first time last year. It didn't taste like grocery-store brocolli and I loved the little trees that grew after the first head. I ate them almost daily from our three plants.
The story was this. One woman had carefully cleaned the brocolli from the garden and served it for supper to her husband. He was happily munching until he saw...HALF a worm as his next bite approached his mouth! Half a worm is much worse than a whole worm.
Gross.
Here's my question then. Look at how much brocolli I was planning for this year. Do I plant them? How careful do I have to be when eating them? Or how do I keep the worms away?
4 comments:
I'm pretty sure that Loretta doesn't eat them for that reason.
I beleive they need to be covered with remay fabric to keep the bugs out. I have heard Jurrina talk about it.
Was I just lucky last year because I only had three plants? Not enough to attract the bugs? Or did I just swallow a lot of worms and not know it? Yuck!
I don't know what remay fabric is, but I'll maybe be proactive this year.
Worms...Yikes!! Your little plants look great. Good for you for starting vegetables. (I only start flowers)
Hi Ev,
ah yes, those awful worms! You can cover your plants with floating row covers but the Butterflies will still try very hard to lay their eggs on the plants. So any loose corners or a windy day and there they are, nice and cozy under the cloth, laying eggs.
The best advice I can give you is to check the under sides of the leaves every day and scrape the eggs off the plants. Once you have worms (and you know this because you've seen those pretty white Butterflies) you can spray the Broccoli heads with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) Set the nozzle of a spraybottle on the 'thinnest' setting (jet) and spray from underneath the head.
There are these tiny wasps that LOVE eating those fat juicy Broccoli worms but I'd say the BT is the best defense.
Don't believe that you can put the Broccoli in salt water and the worms will come off; some worms will but enough will stay in and then you get the tales of the half eaten worms...yuck!
Jurrina
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