Anyway back to the what was going on....I went outside, new watering can in hand with some tomato booster/water. I was desperate to get my tomatoes to fully develop and ripen. They seem to either just drop off (blossom drop) or seem to sit at that green stage and never ripen. Florida may have awesome weather for gardening year round but the soil is rather pathetic (super salty sand). Next year I am going to do raised beds to circumvent this soil problem. Dang, I keep getting sidetracked....so there I was admiring one of those green tomatoes wishing it would get the balls to ripen up...I was starting to feel like it knew how much I wanted to eat it and was just trying to delay the inevitable or at least I am hoping the inevitable when what did I spot on one of the leaves but a giant caterpillar (tomato horn-worn).
Now normally I would be all "Cool! Remi come check out the caterpillar." but not this time. It made me start examining the plants. Damn that 'pillar for eating my 'mato plants. I hurried inside, grabbed a plastic bag and sharp scissors and went to work picking off caterpillars and cleaning up the foliage. The tomato plants really hadn't suffered much but those caterpillars would.
Sadly although my tomato plants seemed like they would be fine my other plants unfortunately met their demise. After being so focused on the tomatoes it was a shock to see nothing but frilly looking leaves and green naked stalks of the other plants just pathetically clinging on.
This here is one of my Kale leaves. I was so mad....
Okay so this isn't the best pic but whatever...it is early yet, I was pulling weeds in my garden dressed in my workout clothes and it's like 90 with high humidity. I'm sure my face might have looked something like this.
These are the caterpillars I pulled off of two leaves of Kale before I realized how futile the effort would be and just ripped out everything but the tomato plants and two struggling carrot plants. They are different from the horn-worn caterpillars and seemed to be more prolific. These guys met the disposal with a lot of whining from Remi about killing baby butterflies.
She wasn't very happy with me when I told her she could do it if she was going to whine about it.
The garden after the purge...oh my leeks seem scrawny but untouched too. What is really annoying about this entire thing is that my radishes apparently decided it was time to start being more than just green plants. I am so sad that there were no leaves to further support development but Remi and I salvaged two for a mini taste test.
Those were some pretty spicy little radishes. Well, all in all, the experience isn't by far a wasted one. Remi learned that not all caterpillars are good and I learned first hand what a good rain, bug season and green plants mean. I know there is always the next garden to improve on and I also learned that amending Florida soil is more work than just putting up raised beds with new mix.
