Let's Start This Thing Over

He gave also their crops to the grasshopper And the product of their labor to the locust.  Psalm 78:46

Ever since the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, things have been tough in the garden.  Man was going to have to toil by the sweat of his brow to have the soil yield food to eat.  There would be briers and thorns and weeds and inclement weather and pests of all sort.  Our garden cannot even be remotely compared to the Garden of Eden.  Most of the time, it is more aptly named, The Garden of Weedin'.  Today's post is about insects, though, and how sometimes things just don't work and you have to start again from scratch.

This year I was scanning the Internet for different ideas for the Fall/Winter Garden and I stumbled upon a website specifically for Louisiana that had a monthly planting guide.  I've traditionally planted all the seeds for my fall crops directly in the ground in early - mid September.  This publication suggested planting the seeds in seed pots in late July - early August and then you'd transplant the young plants into the garden.  The idea is that you'd get a jump on the Fall/Winter crop growing season.

It sounded like a great idea.  We would be eating broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels Sprouts earlier.  I planted my seeds, watered them and they grew.  They got a little 'leggy' seeking the sun, because I kept them on the patio out of the blistering heat.  But that's okay.  I would simply move them into the garden and watch them continue to grow and we'd be eating fresh homegrown vegetables a little earlier this year!

Fall Seedlings ready to be transplanted

Or so I thought.  The very next day I brought my hoe out to the garden and walked around back to the patio to begin carrying the trays of seedlings.  I was surprised to see that some sort of insect discovered my plants  and at almost every leaf off of them!  Argghhh!!  Oh well.  I tried a new idea and it just didn't work.





Next year, if I try this again, I'll be ready with some sort of organic pest control spray like Neem Oil or soapy water to try to combat the bugs.  It is just doggone hard to try to grow anything in the hot summer months of July and August.  To be safer, I may just stick with my old tried and true plan of planting seeds directly into the garden soil in September.

Planting early to 'get a jump' on the Fall crops seemed to only succeed in giving the insects an opportunity to 'jump' on my Fall Crops.  Planting the seeds a few weeks later allows the heat and the insect pressure to subside.  But that is what gardening (and much of life) is all about - trying new things, sticking with what works and learning from mistakes.  In the next couple of days, I'll show you how we started again from scratch.