Conquering Cabbage Consternation

I’ll admit that it has been years, if not decades, since I planted cabbage and broccoli in my vegetable garden.

When I tried to grow them back in the day, it never failed that within weeks of planting, the pretty white cabbage butterflies would find my plants, lay their eggs and then their larvae, little green worms, commenced to consume my crops.

Oh the unsightly mess. I do not use pesticides in my vegetable garden so that was never an option to control them.

I knew I could cover them with white cloth to keep the butterflies from laying their eggs, but I just don’t like that look in my vegetable garden.

So why have I decided to grow cabbage and broccoli again?

Because I refuse to let “them” win. I don’t have many new tricks up my gardening sleeve other than to be more watchful for the eggs which the butterflies will lay on the underside of the lower leaves.  I am also trying a technique of placing a small tube of cardboard, cut from a paper towel roll, around the base of each plant. This may or may not keep the butterflies from laying their eggs.

And I interplanted the cabbage and brocolli amongst some tulips I planted at the end of each raised bed.

I would show more of the beds with the tulips in bloom because it is pretty, but the weeds. The weeds! So unsightly. They ruin the view. I am going committed to weeding them out before Easter.

I don’t know if the interplanting will hide the cabbage and broccoli plants from the butterflies. But it is a good place to plant them. As the tulips die back, theoretically, the cabbage and broccoli will get bigger, and hide the dying tulip foliage.

We’ll see how it all works out.

In the meantime, I planted out my fourth flat of alyssum yesterday. I don’t know why this spring I am so in love with these little blooms.

It could be their scent. It could be the anticipation of all the pollinators they will attract. It could be that I like the look they give the vegetable garden, spilling out over the edge of the raised beds.

Well, it will be a good look once I do some serious weeding.

I’ll report back in a few weeks on the progress of my cabbage and broccoli, and my other crops already planted including peas, lettuce, spinach, onion sets, radishes, kale, and Swiss chard. Plus the weeding.