This time of year my cabbages are gorgeous. I sincerely regret having to harvest them out of the garden because they fill the garden with a sence of order, decorum and abundance. But I cannot let them split and try to flower so dutifully I head out with my cutting tool. Cabbages have been around for a long time, sustaining man and animal alike. And many a garden thug has tried to beat me to that harvest. Slugs are slimy thieves with a voracious appetite for cabbage. I find an organic product called ironically “Escargo” from Organic Gardening is very useful to control them without harming the garden, my animals or people. The cabbage worm is another culprit. The cabbage butterfly is a deceptively sweet looking white presence in the garden…flitting from plant to plant. I thought this year I would take care of them naturally by catching them with a butterfly net. It must have been amusing for my husband to watch. Those things are a lot faster than they look and have an uncanny knack for knowing where the net will be before I do. So I did something better. I sprayed my garden with compost tea. Where I sprayed I have far fewer cabbage worms! Another pest is the cunning raccoon. Raccoons are not indigenous to our valley.They were brought in years ago by hunters who wanted sport. Now they have multiplied and are a huge problem to the local wildlife and to our gardens. I’ve had many a cabbage ripped open so they could take one or two bites and move on. I have had some success with live trapping (no I don’t kill them). I did find that leaving out saucers of beer to trap and drown slugs was only providing my raccoons with a nightly beer party. When I found one passed out on his back in the middle of my beer traps I decided to just trap the live traps with the beer. Who knew they liked to party that much?
This year, as you can hopefully see from my picture, I am harvesting some lovely heads of cabbage. I think it’s time to learn to make sour kraut. If anyone out there has a favorite recipe I would love to hear from you. just send the recipe to my facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/crazyladyfarm
Isn’t it wonderful that something so wonderful and common as cabbage can be enjoyed by so many! Maybe we can learn something from that.
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