Sandy, Nor'easter knock out my garden

Last two bell peppers

After a hurricane and blizzard, I guess it's safe to say the harvest season is over. Just don't tell my lettuce or broccoli plants, they're still growing. Some of the herbs are plugging along too, though the basil was whipped away by high winds. I pulled the last two bell peppers from the vines before Wednesday's nor'easter, and frankly I couldn't believe they survived Sandy!
But all in all, it's time to shut down the watering system, clip the rose bushes and close up shop.
It was a tough season. Our tomatoes had too many problems to list. Okay, I'll list a few: Rust disease, blossom drop and all around lousy production. The broccoli, though still trying, never amounted to much. The cucumbers failed. Even the pepper plants were under-performers. Only the Japanese eggplants came through in a meaningful way.
So, what's an urban gardener to do? Why look forward to next spring of course. We've already decided to go back to our old faithful tomato varieties of Brandywine, Cherokee Purple and Aunt Ruby's German Green. Just one season without them proved how valuable those strains are, at least in this growing zone. The newbies we tried out -- the Azorean Red, Black from Tula and Green Zebra --  just hated the heat. We had an early spring harvest and then nothing until October! I may try broccoli again, but I'll wait until fall; it prefers cool weather. And I'll remember to plant Kirbies instead of cucumbers. The smaller fruit seems to do better in pots.
I know it seems like a long way to planting season, but it's never too soon to start looking forward to it.

What's eating my broccoli

It never fails. For every bit of good luck in the garden, there's little bad to go with it. I wrote earlier about how well my broccoli plants--new crops added this season--were doing. Just days after harvesting the first little floret, I woke up to this scene: mysterious pin holes on the Piracicaba leaves. Silver Heights Farm, which sells the organically grown plants at Union Square Green Market suggested that flea beetles were eating my brassica. These tiny pests jump around, so they are hard to find and hard to eradicate. I read that the beetles overwinter in the soil and then lay eggs in the spring. The minute larva eat the roots, though that doesn't usually cause significant damage. When the larva become beetles, however, they start feasting on the leaves creating little "shot holes." This may or may not kill the host, depending on the extent of the infestation and the strength of the plant. But lo and behold, the bugs eating my broccoli were not beetles at all. They were cabbage worms - tiny green caterpillars that blend in perfectly with the plant. I found them one morning last week at the crack of dawn. Dozens of them clinging to the leaves and consuming them. I pulled them off one by one and then sprayed with the same Safer Caterpillar Killer that we use to get rid of tomato horn worms. Cabbage worms are larva of white moths, which lay eggs on the leaves. Since spraying, I haven't seen evidence of the pests, so I'm hopeful that the Piracicaba will recover. Now, I hate to point fingers, but I find that every time I buy seedlings from Silver Heights Farms, they come with nasty bugs. I vow every time to avoid the booth, but it does have some of the most interesting veggie varieties, so I have trouble passing it up. Just two weekends ago we bought a Tunisian Backlouti pepper from Silver Heights. We have not seen any bugs yet, but who knows what's lurking.

Flea beetles were not eating our brassica

Cabbage worms were devouring the Piracicaba



Broccoli supreme

When I planted broccoli this summer (see my earlier post) I had no idea that the vegetable was so controversial. But according to an article in The New York Times, How Broccoli Landed on Supreme Court Menu, the healthy green could influence the court's decision on whether President Barack Obama's health care law is constitutional! Who knew?