A few weeks ago I transplanted several lovely brassicas to the garden. I put in 10 or so broccoli plants, ran a soaker hose (hasn’t really been so necessary) and mulched with leaves. I also put in some flowering kale (Happy Rich F1 from johnny’s), cabbage and brussels sprouts.
They’ve been growing well:
Look at those happy leaves! They’re like little pearls of water look like they’re made of plastic. Oh happy plant
Then to my horror, I found this:
It looks like someone cut it off at the stem (you can see it there on the left). What kind of a foul animal would do such a thing? I’m quite sure that whoever it is won’t be getting raptured saturday morning.
I had my suspiciouns, so I dug around a bit in the leaf litter and I found this:
A cut worm. It wasn’t already sitting on a quarter I had to add that to give an idea of scale. These are not the fiendish little white grubs that eat roots. These do one thing — they cut your plants off just above soil level.
As a solution I could add plastic collars around the stems (I usually use a yogurt cup). These work, but I normally only lose a few plants so I don’t worry too much.
That doesn’t mean I allow for this sort of behavior to continue, and I’m not waiting for Saturday’s rapture.
I let my friends mete out the punishment.
My neighbors’ chickens love cut worms. Yum!
