Thursday, May 8, 2008

Mystery of the Missing Lettuce


I thought I was safe. The radishes were up. The lettuce was up. Not a sign of a toppling stem. Today I found 3 plants lying on their sides. The cutworms have shown up and are logging my garden. Luckily for me they like to drag their ill gotten gains down into their lairs, thereby telling me their location. I found three very small cutworms. They were almost cute, but I know better and they were quickly dispatched. Yesterday one of my lettuce seedlings totally disappeared. I wondered what had gotten it. But since it was so small, there was no evidence left at all as to its demise. It just vanished. Well now that the mystery of the missing lettuce is solved, I know I have to be more vigilant. I can’t miss a day of checking my little plants. A single cutworm can mow down all of my newly seeded lettuce very quickly; so fast that I may not see any plants at all. Luckily in most places in the garden there is a lot of cilantro and dill popping up and the cutworms seem to love the cilantro. I can use to lose a few of those plants. OK I could use to lose hundreds of those plants since they need thinning again.

As to my wireworm traps, not one wireworm was captured after three days. The above ground part of one carrot seemed to have been tasted by the slugs and ants seem very interested in another, but nothing underground was touched. Not one. I’ll leave them in longer, but wireworms are probably not doing the damage to my cole crops.

I did get some good news today. My media reader showed up today. So I can easily transfer photos from my Elph to my computer. I’ll retroactively add a couple of photos.

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