The square foot garden is coming along rather nicely. The tomato plants are already bigger than last year's. One pepper plant has a blossom. The cilantro is looking like cilantro. Only two of the onions took, so I planted a second crop of carrots in the 1/2 a square foot left vacant by the onions. And the lettuce--well it is ready for harvest.
So this morning I harvested a panful of green leafy lettuce and two fat green lettuce worms. When I find a lettuce worm I carefully remove it from the raised bed garden and place it gently back on the ground. And then I step on it. Because I did not plant enough lettuce for all of us. The worms are very persistent. They keep showing up. (I'm pretty sure they are new worms-not the ones I have already stepped on.) How do worms find lettuce? The bed is raised 8 inches from the ground. That would be the equivalent of me scaling a rock wall 40 ft. high. I don't think I would do that for a square foot of m&ms. I'm sure I wouldn't do it for lettuce.
I felt a little bad about the worms because they look a lot like Heimlich from A Bug's Life. But then I remembered Hopper's speech about the ants. Something like this:
You let one of those worms stand up to you and pretty soon they're all standing up. Those puny little worms outnumber us 100 to 1. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life. It's not about lettuce, it's about keeping those worms in line...
So I will continue to squish any worms that show up in my lettuce beds.
Until a big bird comes along and eats me. (Maybe this is one of those analogies that doesn't hold up very well if you carry it too far.)
5 comments:
Now you need to get a few backyard hens. They turn lettuce worms into eggs, which make a great addition to your lettuce in a fried egg sandwich. Pass the mayo please.
I was blogging because I had no idea what to make for supper. Thanks to you, Nancyann, we had chicken with our salad. Love you!
I have not raised lettuce for two years but love raising it when I did. I never had lettuce worms but had other things in my garden, like white flies, aphids, deer, squirrels, children, etc.
I would not squish deer or children.
Perhaps, if you could fly, you would try for those m&ms... http://rodale.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54f86af5688330115707f4e97970b-800wi
Post a Comment