On small garden tasks

Things have been so busy, food-wise, that I’ve needed to juggle to shoehorn in the rest of the things of life. The garden luckily doesn’t require much of my time now, except for harvesting things, but it still requires some of my time. Mornings before work are now time for gardening. (Mornings previously were blogging time, so we shall see how many posts I put out over the next few weeks; forgive me if I am absent.) I adore the gardens in the morning: so damp, so still.

I’ve done a couple of garden maintenance things this week that I thought I should mention. One, I topped the Brussels sprouts: I removed the top growing leaves (about the top 4″ of stalk) to force the plants to put their energy into making sprouts for me. I do adore tiny sprouts, but having an entire harvest of all marble-sized sprouts is annoying.

Off wit’ ya head!

The second thing: I got out a small cup of vegetable oil and an eyedropper and I dripped oil on to the tops of my corn, right where the silks come out of the husk. I have Barbara Damrosch to thank for reminding me to do this: the oil suffocates the eggs/larva of the notorious corn borer. If you don’t have a field of corn to do, this method does work. Me? I have only about 8 rows of popcorn, and I planted it really late, so some corn is ready to be oiled up now. You should do this when the tassels are about 4-5 days old.

The corn borers, though, have had complete license to attack my outdoor tomatoes. Ick, how disgusting. Makes me want to uproot the plants that much earlier! And I just might.