I have an eggplant growing that looks ready to harvest. It's much smaller than a typical grocery-store eggplant, but it's about the size of the eggplants I got in the veggie co-op a few weeks ago. Maybe it's ready to harvest? Maybe it's past ready? Again, clueless.
And let's sidestep to talk about my dream the other night. I watched a YouTube video on how to harvest a cabbage because I had a feeling that my lone cabbage plant was ready to be harvested. It had some holes in the outer leaves, but the center head looked great. It had to be time. All of my spring cabbage plants went kaput in the heat, but I had one pretty cabbage plant from last Fall that looked about ready to go. I watched the video and decided that my cabbage was about ready come out of the garden. I went to bed that night and had a weird dream about pulling the cabbage up and it made this horrible ripping sound and I pulled and pulled and ended up ripping up half of the Northern Hemisphere up with it. It was very disturbing.
Fast-forward to yesterday morning. After having that dream I decided that it was finally THE day to harvest that cabbage. I figured I'd let the chickens out and then come back inside, get a knife and head on out to the garden. On the way back inside I swung by the garden to discover, much to my horror, that some evil creature of the night clearly had the exact same dream and eaten the cabbage before I got there.
WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?
I'm always a day late and a dollar short in the garden.
To mark my cabbage's demise, I've written a short haiku.
(*note: I spelled basterds with an e, much like Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds". No one knows why he did it, but apparently it's less offensive to spell it wrong. And on a gardening blog, I aim to unoffend, even in the face of cabbage murder).
I'm so sorry! I feel so bad for you. Is it those horrible cabbage worms? We harvested one head of broccoli and then a few days later had to pull up both plants because overnight they were just destroyed by those three kinds of worms/caterpillars. We never got a chance to buy the BT which is supposed to work. Next year we will be armed! I hope the rest of your garden is doing well.
ReplyDeleteSorry that you weren't the one to enjoy that nice head of cabbage!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear about your cabbage but, I have to say, this post was very entertaining. ;)
ReplyDeleteOMG that's hilarious! Sorry Kate, I know you wanted that cabbage badly, but things are going so much better for you this year in the garden we all needed to be reminded of "gardening WITHOUT skills"! Plus, I can laugh, since I am not immune to this timing thing either, hence my gorgeous broccoli flowers that I never knew looked that way until it happened...LOL
ReplyDeleteThat was hilarous. Dead cabbage haiku is my favorite. All my bracissas got eaten up too.
ReplyDeleteOK, start feeling up your veggies *wink-wink*.
ReplyDeleteWhen cabbages feel really firm, cut them (don't pull them). If you leave the root and bottom leaves, they will almost always grow another small, but delicious head. Just like broccoli forms side shoots if you just cut the head and don't pull it out. If you wait too long to cut your cabbages, they will split open...that's what yours did. It looks like you could have cut it though, and just peeled back the damaged part and eaten the small center.
Your potatoes will be edible any time after they blossom. Right after they blossom, you can carefully wiggle your fingers under the plant, feel for and pull out any new potatoes you find that are large enough to suit your taste. Leave the plant to grow more and larger potatoes. Sometimes they don't blossom, so you just have to take a chance and feel around occasionally. If you want to leave them until they are mature, just wait until the plants die back naturally. I can never wait that long ;-)
Oh my! A day late would suck...."ripped up the northern hemisphere" - that made me laugh. Hehe..
ReplyDeleteI LOVE your haiku :o)
ReplyDeleteRO xxx
P.S. Sorry about the cabbage.
Now that is just sad.
ReplyDeleteAt least you got a great blog out of the dang thing.
That looks suspiciously like my tomatoes before I put a fence up to keep the chickens out. The order of operations you described makes me wonder -- did the chooks have access to the cabbage?
ReplyDeleteEek! I've never grown a full head o' cabbage... it always falls victim to the midnight munchers.
ReplyDeleteAlso... you jinxed me! My hen Edith is now broody... We're in full scale broody buster mode, continually running her off the nest and locking her out the hen house. How's your girl doing? Has she gone back to normal yet?