First some updates:
I have been plagued and kept busy by the small white butterfly I mentioned in my last post. My collard is not even the hardest hit, even though it’s the largest brassica in my garden. I have a small kale plant I put in last winter that I’ve harvested once already. The small whites laid about 20 eggs on its leaves. I smashed (GRRR SMASH! SMASH!) every one of the little suckers into oblivion. The little flutterbys have also laid quite a few eggs on my kale starts that I have grown from seed. It’s very odd to see a plant that’s no bigger than a sprig of parsley get bombarded with eggs. I am vigilant and with any luck, I will be able to control the pests with my daily rounds.
Also, as of this posting, there are now 23 out of 30 holes filled in my bee house. I’m very excited and each day I go out to the box and check out what work has transpired. I do love my little bees.
I’m very pleased with the progression of two things in my garden: my Jerusalem artichokes and my strawberries. Almost all of my strawberry plants have not only put out stalks for flowers, but many of them have started blooming. We have some good warm sun today, so with any luck, the bees will find the blooms and help the plants makes some scrumptious little red berries!
I’m also happy that my Jerusalem artichokes have survived the winter and have started to emerge from the earth. Last fall, I harvested the tubers from the bottoms of the plants (for those that aren’t familiar with Jerusalem artichokes, they are a sunflower, native to the U.S. that produces an edible tuber). After I harvested, I transplanted the root systems (sans tubers) to a different spot in the yard. I got the nagging feeling after the transplant that maybe I should have left one or two tubers on each plant. After all, the plant makes the tubers as a means of storing energy. I thought that perhaps I had harvested a bit too much, leaving the plants with nothing to sustain them during the winter. Additionally, we had a mighty bad winter last December, where we got much colder weather and more snow than normal for this part of the country. I was just sure that I’d doomed the little suckers. Happily, little green sprouts started popping up through the ground this past week, indicating that my transplant was successful. I’m sure that I’ll have another great crop this year (although I might just take it easy on how many I take from each plant).
