High hopes, caterpillar dreams

I have never really grown winter veggies here, if you live on the wet coast, you will understand. It's really beautiful for the first 2 weeks of September, and then...... all rain breaks loose. And it doesn't really stop until June of the next year. It kind of takes all the fun out of gardening.

Now we have the garden plots, and I am blogging, and am a member of Blotanical. So some of my old enthusiasm is back. As I happily browsed the seed rack for winter veggie seeds, I was amazed by the selection we could have. The only problem, I was about 2 months too late.

Right there in the West Coast Seeds catalogue was a article called

Summer Planting - Winter Gardening. Plant your winter garden by JULY.

Whoops!

We did not get into the garden plots until June, and everything I had planted was just starting to grow in July.

There went my opportunity to grow Brussels Sprouts, Leeks, and Winter Cabbages.

Winter transplants are a little hard to find. It just doesn't seem to be a big thing here on the coast. Might be all the rain?

I am growing great worms.

There was a great paragraph titled, "It's September and you forgot about planting in JULY.

You can still try corn salad, arugula, radishes and spinach."

OK, but I wanted.........

I have put some peas in, because we are supposed to get a really nice fall. And they love cool weather, they hated the hot summer sun we had.

I am also growing my absolute favorite Black Tuscan Kale. Which they say is the most elegant vegetable you will ever see. I just know that it's one of the most expensive I have ever bought organically. But the taste is so worth it.

After I planted the seeds, the seedlings looked so lovely and perfect, until the day when I was finally ready to transplant them, and they were striped of foliage. Some cute little caterpillars had eaten most of my transplants. They were exactly the same color as the leaves. So here I am nearsightedly peering at black caterpillar poop trying to find the leaf color matching bugs!

Now I realize that my optometrist is correct and I am going to need bifocals soon....... I keep saying I am not old enough yet, but trying to find those babies on the leaves has given me a huge headache.