The Organic Lemon

One of my readers made a blog post suggestion to me: How do your protect your little seedlings from inclement weather? They had just planted their little garden and then heard on the news that heavy rain, strong winds and hail were in the forecast…

When your seedlings first begin to sprout out of the ground or get transplanted outside, there are a few things you can do to help protect them from a variety of threats that can come their way.

For starters, frost. Sometimes we have those crazy days were there is a ridiculously late frost just when we thought our seedlings were in the clear. Or, the forecast predicts heavy rains with possible hail and high winds as we glance out to the garden and wonder how the tiny seedlings will survive. Then, if your seedlings were fortunate enough to dodge inclement weather, there are the occasional birds that mistake your bean sprout for  worm and scratch them out, the squirrels that tries to eat your seed pods or a bug of some sort that decides your garden leaves are the perfect birthing place for their little larva in the early spring.

So, here is something you can try…

Find and empty, plastic container. The best and most cost effective ones are soda bottles. Depending on the size of your plants, you may have to get a larger bottle (I am thinking of those large, plastic jars that pretzels come in). Cut the bottle in half and place it over your little plants. This will protect them from bugs, inclement weather, and frost since it acts as a mini greenhouse – holding in heat, protecting from frost and creating a plastic barrier from all the elements. There is one thing you MUST REMEMBER TO DO however. Remove the plastic cover once the threat has passed or is starts to really warm up outside. Otherwise, it will get very hot inside the container and your seedlings can shrivel up. This is really ment to be used for temporary protection, you don’t want to leave these on top of your plants all season long!

For this demo, I used a regular water bottle:

Once you have your plastic bottle, cut it in half with a pair of scissors ( TIP: It is a lot easier to start the cut if you puncture the bottle with something first)

Once cut in half, you bring the top half to the garden. I like to use the top half because it has the opening at the top which will still allow air in. carefully place the container over your seedlings and press it down into the soil to make sure a strong wind wouldn’t be able to blow it off:

And there you have it! A happily protected garden seedling

BAG BUG! … at least a bag bug to have in the garden…

These first two photographs were borrowed from www.butterfliesandmoths.org 

This labeling of the Green Cabbage Worm as a bag bug has been a painful claim to make as I do love to have butterflies in the garden and I really try not to discourage their larva from growing. Other butterfly larva  nibble on my garden crops without significant damage. The Green Cabbage Worm, on the other hand, is incredible destructive to garden crops. Especially Kale, Collard Greens, and Broccoli Rabe. This is the one bug that I fight most of my garden battles with.

The green cabbage worm can be tough to spot because they are the same green color as most of your garden greens and they like to hide out on the underside of the leaf:

Or right in the stem part of the leaf:

Their destruction is hard to miss however. If left alone, all your leaves will end up looking like this:

If you do cannot spot any green cabbage worms but notice a lot of dark green little droppings on the leaves, take a closer look! They are there somewhere! Here is the cabbage worm alongside some of their droppings:

In early spring, once my garden begins to grow, I inspect the underside of the leaves to try to detect the eggs before they hatch and pick them off. If I missed any, I will know for sure! The next step I take is I pick off the green caterpillars by hand. You can avoid having to do both these steps by covering your plants with a light mess to allow water and sunlight through but to avoid butterflies and other pests who try to lay eggs on your crops. If you are stuck picking the caterpillars off by hand and you happen to have chickens, feed them to your chickens! They will love you forever!

If you are a little late in searching for them, they may have already eaten their fill of your crops and set themselves up in their chrysalis:

If you see any Cabbage White Butterflies fluttering around your garden, they are probably laying eggs on your greens. One way to help prevent infestation is to look for and pick off the eggs they lay. Their eggs are small, yellow, oval-shaped eggs that are laid on the underside of the leaves. They are tiny and hard to find so you really have to look. Do you have any kids? Send them on a scavenger hunt for tiny, yellow eggs! Here is a close up shot of one of the eggs:

This is how the egg looks on the leaves at from a normal view-point:

Hard to see it? Here, I’ll help point it out:

Here is a website with some more information of the Cabbage Worm and what to do if you have them in your garden.

http://organicgardening.about.com/od/pestcontrol/p/cabbageworms.htm