A new secret weapon

So they’re not really a secret, but they’re new to us and our quest to have a great garden.

First up, beneficial nematodes. I never heard of these until we stopped by Worm’s Way to buy our compost bin last year. We told the incredibly knowledgeable worker about all our problems and it was her suggestion. The store’s blog has an in-depth explanation of all sorts of beneficial insects.

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Caterpillars!

Cleaning up the beds today and we found a ton (ok, about 8) of these caterpillars hanging out on our parsley plants. They’re apparently the swallowtail butterfly and aren’t harmful so I left them alone.

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Homegrown salad

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but not too much has been happening in our garden until recently. Last week we were lucky enough to make our first harvest of lettuce. After much battle with squirrels eating all our broccoli and spinach seeds, the lettuce starting sprouting.

Our first harvest of lettuce.

I was pretty excited when we had enough to make a decent salad from one harvest.

When I rinsed the lettuce, I noticed a couple tiny green worms floating in the water. Kind of gross, but after a few good washes everything appeared to be normal. I did a little research and it seems like it might be the caterpillar of the cabbage butterfly. Not sure if it’s a big problem or not because our second harvest had none, and there wasn’t really much damage to the actual leaves.

We made a second sowing this weekend and I’m hoping that comes up as well as some of our first (OK, second) plantings. The seeds in random rows wherever there was space in the bed––a little haphazard, but it works.

If all goes well we should have a steady supply through the season!

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