Damage done

There is something about losing a plant to disease or pest that feels like a rite of passage. This year we took a couple of risks, grew a couple of things new to us, and watched a couple of things wilt and be ruthlessly chewed.

The pretty white moths Gracie watched grow from their cow-a-pidder stage finally got the best of us.

eaten broccoli leaf

I have seen a number of posts (listed below) suggesting organic gardeners try nematodes (sp?) but I was simply too lazy to try… especially since my children enjoyed picking the green worms off the plants and raising them into voracious butterflies much more than they enjoy eating broccoli.

Zuchinni wilt

Our garden experiment felt a lot like a biology lab when I read this blog’s June post . Blogger Dave lives very close to us in middle Tennessee and so I have been reading his blog with great interest, especially when he gives instruction on garden pests. His description of a squash borer that transmits a disease called wilt was very informative, but, I swear, within a week… my plant leaves looked a lot like his. I checked for the beetle he photographed, with spots on its back, and found nothing, until last weekend. I did see one beetle, and as my zucchini plant died, it seemed to attract more aphids and other critters, perhpas the equivolent of an injured fish attracting shark.

zuchinni bread dreams

The girls have been tasting the zucchini spears at dinner. We saute them up with fresh basil, store-bought garlic and italian spices with olive oil, but their true love is zucchini bread. We have a recipe from a lady named Johannah Runyon, who we got to know in Columbus, Ohio years ago. She was a big gardener and had wonderful recipes from her youth in Germany (as well as fascinating stories about growing up when she can remember the Nazi youth groups before the war ended).

We’ll collect the last zucchinis and say a fond farewell to the dying wilt-ridden plants, and I’ll share Johanna’s recipes in a bit.