Pestilence!

A pestilence has been visited upon the Mars Farm.

It has come in the form of depraved cabbage worms:

I am devouring your collards and brussels sprouts right now!

And the dreaded powdery mildew:

We are sucking the life from your pea plants and there is nothing you can do about it!

It's true that there is nothing I can do about the pea plants because it's just too far along. I can see clearly today that the mildew is so advanced, in fact, that pea production is slowing to a crawl. Alas!

As for the collards & brussels sprouts, I have begun to combat the problem the old-fashioned way: picking the little bastards off the plants by hand. The plants are mature enough that most of them should withstand this initial attack, which was, by the way, brought on by delightfully warm weather & those cute little white butterflies I was formerly so fond of. The mustard greens I planted a couple weeks ago next to the brussels sprouts have come up -- as part of the same family as collards, brussels sprouts, & cabbage, they're in peril. I must be vigilant.

The flora of Mars will not be kept down, even in the face of mortal danger. The marjoram, basil, & oregano I planted inside a week ago have just come up, as has my first fava bean bush on the front porch.  

I also have finished planting some 30-inch planters with more peas, more collards & brussels sprouts, and more lettuce. Here is how I got a 1.5 cubic foot bag of potting soil and a shovel on a flash one-day sale ($5! Just when I realized that I needed one!) up the hill on Friday after work:

No Dad, I didn't ride it like this. 

Here is the finished product:

More collards (which have just come up today! 4 days!) & brussels sprouts in one, and peas & lettuce in the other two. I wanted to try out setting them in different places & see what works best for next year.


Next year I should also come up with a plan for successive sowings, because in about a month, there is going to be an awful lot of lettuce all at once.