I am delighted to announce that I have made another milestone and appear to have won a skirmish in the garden. I’ve mentioned a few times about improving the soil health which in turn improves the plants’ health. I’ve written a couple times about how I won against potato bugs in 2018. But I never finished the post I’d started about it. You can now find it here.
Well, most of the broccoli harvest is in now. There were about 10 cabbage worms total found on the heads. There were 9 heads and most had no worms at all.
I found only 6 places where there was very minor worm damage, and most interestingly, there was no frass at all. None. And you know what goes in one end of caterpillar comes out the other end in short order. There were no webs. No cocoons.
And if you recall from the potato story once a plant reaches Level 4 of plant health, it dispatches the bugs if they eat the plant material.
The biggest head – 3.21 lbs
Level 2 of plant health can do this to the cabbage worms. The difference here with the broccoli is the heavy waxed leaves, indicating it has reached Level 3, and the strong scent of broccoli indicating the production of plant secondary metabolites (PSM).
One way I know the soil is responsible for this is that I was never able to implement the foliar feeding until the beginning of July. Usually it starts in May. There has only been 3 foliar feedings this season to date but the broccoli is phenomenal.
2nd largest head – 2.68 lbs.
This journey to heal and balance my soil since 2011 is paying off very well now. As I mentioned before it took me far longer to reach this point because I had limited resources. This process can happen much faster if you have a bit more ready cash and lots more energy.
One other point I didn’t make in the potato post is that I never till the garden. I let the worms do it, and simply aerate rows and beds with a broadfork. I do nothing that will be detrimental to the biology in my soil.
Giant heads, waxy, waxy leaves (my fingers squeaked from handling them)
My seeds are treated with Bio Gold, a powdered biology mix before planting. This ensures the seedlings have the biology available to them in the seedling pots prior to planting in the garden.
I have only ever used black plastic once, during a year I did not plan to plant a garden. It was removed far enough in advance to allow the 3 months for the biology to recover, and the 9 months to allow the mycorrhizae fungi to recover.
Paying attention to the nutritional needs of the plants, keeping stress to seedlings and plants at a minimum, and making sure the soil biology is thriving are the key things to a nutrient dense healthy garden.
The harvest this time was 17.5# and filled my biggest bowl and half of the next biggest one.
I got 19 1½ pint meals from this harvest. That gives me over a half year’s worth of broccoli so far. I have another half dozen heads yet to fill out, so there will be at least 1 more harvest.
I finished in plenty of time to get ready for the concert and to discover I’d never finished the potato post. But I was too tired to write it on Sunday afternoon. I’d also done my laundry as I’d hoped to put up the hoophouse and plant the ginger in it on Monday with my backup helper. But a check with the weather showed on Monday it’s to rain all day. So on Monday I will be writing these posts and I hope to get my mom’s birthday present made.