The Worm Turns

The worm turns is an idiom used to explain a situation that changes suddenly and abruptly.  It's appropriate to use that expression when talking about today's topic.  Cucumbers.  Our spring/summer cucumber crop was stellar, stupendous, and superlative.  Each day we'd harvest all we could carry.  We ate them every lunch, gave lots away at church and to family and friends and lacto-fermented many pickles in gallon and quart-sized jars.  

When the cucumbers in that garden petered out, I planted another row of them on the same trellis, while working some compost into the soil for nutrients.  You never want to take more out of the soil than you put into it.  The cucumbers quickly grew, attached themselves to the trellis, bloomed and set fruit. In fact, just as we ate the last pickle from the pickle jar, the cucumber harvest began to come in again.  We were just starting to bring in a half dozen a day and enjoying them cut up with some salt and pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then...

And then in one stinking day things turned south.  Worms descended on our cucumbers like the plagues in Egypt.   I guess had I been more vigilant and observant, I could have tried some neem oil on them, but it was not to be.

Just look at the destruction.  A few days prior, the leaves were broad and bright green, tendrils gripping the trellis as hopeful vines inched skyward.  Today we're left with webs, poop and the remnants of formerly productive vines.  

I scratched through the rubble of the failed crop and found the perpetrator, in fact three of them feasting on the last remaining cucumber.  I tossed it over the fence where many hens were waiting and watched with delight as I witnessed the worms got their comeuppance.

But no long faces here,  tomorrow I'll work some fresh compost and some chicken litter into the soil beneath the trellis and I'll plant our fall crop of Sugar Snap Peas.  Things turned quickly with the cucumbers - from abundance to abhorrent.  But things can turn quickly again with our crop of sugar snap peas hopefully and prayerfully planted.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.