Battling an army of baby caterpillars!

I had to help babysit my little grand-daughter this week and although my dear husband did his best to water and tend to my veg patch, an army of little green caterpillars hatched and have almost devoured all the plants! 
The cabbages have gosamar, skeletonised leaves and when I examined them today I could see clusters of bright green, tiny worms chomping away on whatever is left.  There were some on the brinjal plants, a few of the corn leaves  looked a bit ragged and there were even a few on

the cucumber vines.  I've got two hairy baby cucmbers clinging to life on the vines.

The lettuces have been totally wiped out so I'll start from scratch once I've managed to wage war on this army. I didn't want to bring out the Agent Orange but if I don't do something, there'll be nothing left to harvest. So - I bought a bottle of Margaret Roberts biological caterpillar insecticide for the control of leaf-eating caterpillar larvae on various edible crops, ornamentals, roses, bulbs and lawns.

The blurb says that it "targets destructive leaf-eating larvae of Lepidopterous spp. No harmful toxic residues. No secondary poisoning. Harmless to bees, birds, fish, pets, wildlife, beneficial insects and natural predators. Can cause harm to young larvae of butterfly species, has no effect on adults. Avoid spraying onto plants visited by adult butterflies. Harvesting of edible crops directly after application."

Finn measured out 5ml into our 5lt spray bottle, pumped it up and sprayed the whole vegetable garden with it.  An hour later I went back to have a look at the results, fearful of finding a killing field, and there were a few determined, stubborn green wrigglys still clinging to the undersides of the cabbage leaves!  I then took over the spray bottle and gave the cabbages another going over with the spray.

I've had a nice crop of bite size tomatoes and the peppadew bush is groaning under the weight of the fruit (vegetables?).  This website says that it is a fruit and that "Peppers are a fruit—a fruit is defined as a vegetable that holds its seeds internally (avocados and cucumbers are fruits too, as are all of the chili peppers)." The Peppadew is being "touted as “the first truly new fruit to be launched on the world market since the kiwi 26 years ago."

Well, let's hope Margaret Roberts will help me to wage biological warfare on the pesky larvae and that I can soon get working on my 2nd square foot garden box.
PS:  Only the Basil seeds grew in the 'Herb-in-a-can' gardens on my window sill.  The Oregano and Thyme didn't sprout at all so I might gro something else in them.  The Reel-garden beans, beetroot and corn have all grown but the carrots never really got going.  I think I'll stick to the square foot gardens in future.

Reel Gardening and Herbs in a can

With my interest in vegetable gardening, my family gave me some interesting and inovative Christmas gifts this year.

Greg and Sharon gave me three novelty cooldrink sized cans - 'Herbs in a tin" - Basil, Thyme and Oregano (supplied by Fuzhou Premiere Crafts.)  Each can has to be opened at the bottom and the plastic cap replaced, then the lid is peeled off the top to reveal a potting medium which has to be kept moist.  They also come with a tiny packet containing a few replacement seeds. Besides herbs they also sell 'Tin-can Flowers' and one website showed Pointsettia, Cosmos, Lavender and small Chrysanthemum daisies in cans.  I've placed the tins on my kitchen windowsill and it'll be interesting to see how long the seeds take to germinate and how large the plants can grow in a cool-drink sized can.

The other gift was from Jeff and Gail, my brother and his wife. This is a spring/summer planting pack of 5 vegetable seeds on 1m long reel of paper. Now planting seeds in strips of paper is not new and you can read about many different projects glueing seeds to strips of toilet paper, or growing sprouts in tissue paper.  The 'Reel Gardening' process is a more advanced version of this type of germination of seeds in paper. 

Reel Gardening was an award winning science project of Claire Reid, a 16 year-old girl from South Africa.  It involves a pre-fertilised seed strip that encases seeds in biodegradable paper.  The strips indicate the correct depth that the seeds should be buried with a coloured line at the top and the seeds are placed at the correct distance apart from one another inside the strips. Each strip is colour coded e.g. Tomato is red, Beetroot is purple etc.  The paper strip is 3.5cm wide and is purchased in metre strips.  Each package has a specific amount of metres.  Instructions are printed on each strip in English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sesotho, Sepedi, Setswana and Xhosa.

 Visual instructions are also printed. The strips are very easy to understand and can even be planted by children.
Her invention was entered into the Eskom Young Scientists expo which won a gold medal at the national finals. The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry nominated Claire’s invention for the South African Junior Water Prize as it reduces water wastage by 80% and Claire won. Claire then represented South Africa  at the 2003 Stockholm Junior Water Prize where Reel Gardening came first out of 24 countries.

My pack contains Carrot, Tomato, Beans, Sweet Corn and Beetroot seed strips. The package shows a 2m X 1m area for planting but I decided to use up the remaining Mel's Mix in plant troughs and have planted the strips in those.  They are the same depth as the box garden so the carrots (up to 20cm long) and beetroot should have enough space to grow.  On the ReelGardening website they say that the Sweet Corn will reach maturity in 80 days but there are no eta dates for the other vegetables.  We'll just have to wait and see.