So lets look at the evidence that we had a summer...
Our neighbour (not immediate neighbour but round the corner) has made a beauitful vegetable garden, spending so much time and money on a fence, trees and shrubs and drainage in an attempt to create a "good growing area", and it looked to have worked. Their vegetables were tall and green looking in the view I have from my bedroom window. He built raised beds with real soil brought on the back of a wagon, put in drainage, lovely chipped paths and a seating area with stone walls and pavements. There are beautiful flowers and lights that twinkle in the dark having stored power from the daylight. Their umbrella shades the view of their table and chairs from my prying eyes but I know how much I have used my own this summer...
Then over one day the beautiful vegetables disappeared from view. I thought, he obviously didn't use successional planting...but it wasn't that! His brassicas had been decimated by caterpillers. Oh, it is a sad truth known to those who indulge in the passion of growing their own vegetables (sorry, I've been reading the biography of Jane Austen) that vegetables need daily attention if you want to grow organically. Nothing can replace the daily toil of picking off the leaf needy insects and SQUASHING them. If you are vegetarian, there in lies your dilemma...kill a creature and lose your veg or leave the creature...etc.
As you all know, I am no longer vegetarian having reverted to canivorous life on buying the farm and having access to kindly reared and happy animals (at least until they are slaughtered), but can a human live by a holey cabbage alone.
The sunflower seeds will help.
No comments:
Post a Comment