Another week has come and gone, and I feel that much closer to eating fresh veggies from the garden. Realistically, I know it will be a while still, but we all know how quickly the days go. Before you know it, we’ll be trying to pawn off zucchini on all of our family and friends.

I heard from numerous readers who wrote in to say they will draft their garden plan on wrapping paper this year.

It’s been a while since I sent out the call asking you to share photos of your gardens, flowers, chickens, and other Rural Sprout-inspired projects. So, consider this a friendly reminder that we love to see what our readers have been up to. If Rural Sprout has inspired or helped along any project, send us a photo so we can ooh and aah over it.

I may have mentioned that I’m a lazy gardener several million times. If I can do anything to make a task easier or less repetitive, I’m all for it. And to be quite honest, I’m sick to death of the imported cabbageworm war that’s been waged in our garden for the past three years.

On the one hand, I like looking out the window and seeing all those pretty pale yellow butterflies lighting on the flowers, but when they land in the garden on my brassicas, I tend to see red rather than yellow.

Unfortunately, those wriggling little invaders breed a heck of a lot quicker than I could pick them off my plants. It was back to the cabinet war rooms to devise another plan of attack. That entailed a dish soap and neem oil solution that we sprayed daily.

By now, the cabbages looked like someone had peppered them with bird shot, and it was clear they were a lost cause. We were in a bid to save the kale. I know. Is it even worth fighting over? It’s kale.

Even the stupid cabbageworms only liked the Dazzling Blue, which we liked too and was a bit harder to grow. The caterpillars, like my kids, were less chuffed about the Scotch Curly kale, which of course, grows abundantly, but would eat it once they had the Dazzling Blue down to spiky stems. 
 

It’s a fair point.

Standing in my garden, trying to make sure I sprayed both the top and underside of each and every kale leaf, I realized this was far too much work for a self-professed “lazy gardener.” And that didn’t take into account the extra effort needed to wash the kale that we managed to wrest away from the enemy. Between the caterpillar poop and the soapy neem coating, those bags of washed and chopped kale at the supermarket started to look awfully tempting. 

Around late August, I threw my hands up in the air and, in the words of Marie Antionette, said, “Let them eat kale.”

So, yesterday, after a trip to the hardware store, my sweetie and I built a little polytunnel over one of the 4’ x 16’ beds in our no-dig garden. All the brassicas will be grown under cover this year. Safe from the prying eyes and gnawing mouths of tiny green worms.

And I pitched the rest of the Scotch Curly kale seeds into the compost heap. As a lazy gardener, I’m not going to grow something even the pests won’t eat.