The battle of vegetables.

Quackgrass is a perennial weed that is troublesome to eliminate. The latin name, agropyron repens means 'a sudden field of fire' which attests to its ability to take over fields and gardens. Some of our first experiences in the field were pulling clumps of quackgrass and removing them. Dan told us stories of its strength and capacity to overrun a field. He shared some of his first experiences with quackgrass. He called his father-in-law for some advice of how to get rid of it. The response: you can pull quackgrass, leave it in the sun to dry up, throw the remains into the fire, and a day later you will have quackgrass growing up through the ashes. We listened with a bit of apprehension because we had never experienced this first hand. But now we have. 

We were in the pepper field with English hoes fighting the fight. Two days prior, Dan had cultivated this field with "the G." Our goal was to get between the plants and really attack the weeds. Within minutes, we found the first evidence of this amazingly tough perennial...troublesome to eliminate for sure. It had been ripped from the ground and was laying on the surface drying in the sun. We picked it up and discovered this supposedly dried up weed was actually the beginning of life for six little shoots of quackgrass. Just like this weed, Dan's story of quackgrass rising through the ashes came back to life in my mind. Even though it is a continual problem weed, I had to be amazed at the example of resiliency. I guess in some way, we all can learn from this weed. To fight through adversity. To overcome what tries to get us down. To keep growing. Unlike this weed, we must be careful to battle against the right things, to not try to beat out what is good.           

Now to a major potato/eggplant/tomato pest, the Colorado Potato Beetle. These are actually kind of a beautiful bug, with a bright orange/yellow body and ten narrow black stripes running down the wing covers. But the facts about these beetles significantly decrease their beauty in my eyes. They overwinter as adults in the soil and emerge in the spring. I mean seriously, they come up from the ground, genius. They feed for a while and begin to mate in late spring. The females lay their eggs in clusters of 10-30 bright orange eggs on the underside of leaves. Each female can lay up to 350 eggs in their life. After about 2 weeks, the eggs hatch and damage from the larvae begins. The adults and larvae feed on the foliage, which a potato plant can only handle so much of. These little pests are capable of completely defoliating plants. An entire potato crop can be lost to these tiny things. Beautiful for a moment. Then you become an organic vegetable grower.

So how do we keep this from happening? We crawl down each row on our hands and knees squishing the bright orange eggs, the destructive larvae, and the invasive adults. All we want is to save the plants. The fights we fight to help these vegetables win the battle.

Beautiful right? Do not be deceived.

The eggs.

Just hatched.