Lettuce

Today I harvested my first head of lettuce. It was great! I grew it from seeds planted in late April. The lettuce was slightly more bitter and dare I say more flavorful than lettuce I get in the store. Much to my surprise, there was only one bug on the whole head and not that much dirt. I think the midnight slug attack from a few weeks ago paid off - the lettuce had been chewed in and out and through by the slimy nocturnal creatures so in one weekend I initiated every slug attack I had heard of:

1) Go out with a headlamp in the dark and pick them off (Eeew. Between the lettuce and the dahlias I got about 50.).
2) Put coffee grounds around the base of the plant (thanks to the barista at Victrola who gave me a whole bag).
3) Sprinkle eggshells around the base of the plant (no, they don't smell like rotten eggs).
4) (I was actually too lazy for this one...) Put a cupful of beer half deep in the soil and let them clamour to the "bar" and get drunk and die. Poor suckers don't know when to say when.
5) Apply Sluggo to the soil. Now, Sluggo is not labeled as organic but every organic-friendly garden store sells it. Technically it's made from iron phosphate which "occurs naturally in the soil." When slugs eat it, they feel full and stop eating so they starve to death. (more information here)

Frankly, I think #5 was the one that did the trick. The others look nice and organic and are much more natural than the Sluggo option, but the darn stuff really seems to work. Next time maybe I'll try random assignment of slug control mechanism, but for now I'm happy to have a home-grown salad.

First taste

I ate a strawberry this morning - right from my garden! Unfortunately, so did some other animal, and they left half of it in the bed next to the plant it was stolen from. Who was that varmint? Neighbor kitty? Well, whomever it was, I hope they learned that they don't like strawberries and leave the rest for me. It was a darn good strawberry.

On broccoli

My broccoli fell over. I don't really get how a whole head of broccoli is going to grow on those skinny little stalks. It's growing great, big, tough leaves that I want to chop into some pad see eiw. But is it supposed to fall over or was that the fault of the robins who are constantly pecking in the beds (on account of my vigorous worm population - yay!)? So far the robins have done little damage except to one pea plant that's coming back. Or was the broccoli trampled by neighbor cat who, I hope, is no longer using the bed as a litter box?

Well, I didn't think the broccoli was supposed to fall over so I propped it up with a little mound of soil. I then looked online and found out that broccoli plants grow to be 2-2.5 feet tall! And it grows multiple heads. "Removing the central head stimulates the side shoots to develop for later picking." says the UofI extension website. Wow! 3 heads per plant, 4 plants = 12 heads of broccoli? Fingers crossed!