Broccoli is my most productive winter crop every year. I generally plant six ‘Premium Crop’ broccoli seedlings in a two week succession.

They are spaced only 15 inches apart in two foot raised beds with very rich soil.

I mulch them with some grass clippings topped with pine needles. I rarely have weeds because of the plant shading and the soil holds the moisture from rain or irrigation. My sun field is suboptimal—generally only four to five hours daily because of structures and trees that surround my garden but the plants are still very healthy and productive.

My broccoli heads are usually 8 to 12 inches in diameter, dense and heavy.

Harvest of the main head is followed by one to two months of side shoots which do get smaller as time goes by. So we eat broccoli for many months is the winter.

So here’s what I did wrong this year. My first big mistake was to spray the broccoli leaves with BT for the cabbage worms on a warm sunny day. Then I covered the plants loosely with row cover to exclude more cabbage moths. I created a little greenhouse that severely damaged the broccoli leaves. Everything got worse after that.

The white areas died and the plants looked horrible and had less photosynthetic area when they should have been growing vigorously. I used liquid seaweed and fish emulsion fertilizer to stimulate new growth and they did make somewhat of a recovery. However, around that time I had critter attacks in the garden, eating my broccoli, red cabbage and cauliflower plants. It was likely raccoons and/or rats so I needed to protect the plants.

I didn’t have metal screening high enough to cover the plants so I used a thin material to exclude rats. It did seem to work and the plants recovered to produce small heads. But this was my second mistake as I excluded the beneficial insects that would be my soldiers in the aphids war.

A few days ago I harvested all of the broccoli—main heads and side shoots which were dense with gray aphids. I washed them vigorously but we’ve cooked the broccoli with more aphids than I’d care to eat. I removed all the broccoli plants but also noted that in the next raised bed, two feet away the cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kale plants were free of any aphids. The beneficials were able to access the plants through the large holes in bird netting that was protecting the plants from critters.

The one Chinese broccoli plant that survived the freeze goddammit.

Bastards. Chicken snacks now. I need insect netting. I keep one layer of row cover on overnight but it gets too hot during the day so the cabbage moths have access then.

On the other hand, my one Chinese cabbage that survived the freeze and lives right next to the broccoli is currently untouched. I'd rather have the broccoli, tbh, but I'll take what I can get.

In good news, the Parris Island Cos lettuce is ready to harvest, thus proving the superiority of transplanting in lettuce seedlings because I just thinned the Yedikule lettuce yesterday (scatter sown in an earthbox) and it was incredibly frustrating. I ended up giving all the thinnings to the chickens because everything was too broken and bruised to be much use for salad. I left thinning it too late thinking it would make for better salad but...

I did the far side first and it's recovering somewhat, but the near side looks like someone sat on it. The leaves were hopelessly tangled together and had such friction for each other when trying to tease them apart. Anyway, once again learned why the professionals all use lettuce transplants.

In good news, the barberry that was just bare sticks in the fall that I did a hard pruning to try to reset it...reset. It's coming back great.

The honeynut squash practically jumped out of the soil germinating, all six cells, all twelve seeds. The three cells of Poinsett 76 cucumbers weren't far behind. Otherwise there are two bush Sugar Baby watermelons and three zucchinis (two varieties) up. No movement on the old squash seeds, as expected, though I did fluff up the soil a bit for them today just in case. I had been taking the trays out to the porch in the afternoons while it was hitting the 80s, but it looks like they'll spend most of the remaining twoish weeks or so before transplanting either inside on the heat mat or in the cold frame.

I did finally remember to start moving the overwintered ornamental plants outside. I put the three pots of kalanchoe (alleyway scavenged in early fall) into the cold frame to acclimate.

But the pots of purple heart don't tend to need that so much. They always languish inside over the winter...in a few weeks they'll be bushy and dark purple again. I do still need to move my big mealybug-infested monstera outside to see if that can help cure it (along with insecticidal soap), but picking a spot where it's the least likely to infest anything else has proven a challenge given how everything is packed together right now. I may need to clear a space near the scrap lumber.

The cosmos I transplanted into the deck box planter has started to bloom. It's a departure from my usual orange/yellow cosmos, but hey free seed. It's also about half the height, which is nice for the planter.

Lord Jesus it’s a fire! These suckers getting ate.

The fuckin culprit. Cabbage worms. They’re so cute I tried reasoning with them. I have no choice but to resort to violence.

In planting my cool season garden over the last few weeks, I’ve encountered some of the usual problems—cabbage moths, moles and sow bugs. None of my methods for dealing with these is perfect so I experiment and try new interventions.

Cabbage worms are a terrible problem at this time of year. Though the moths are quite lovely as they dart about the garden they are part of the cycle that causes significant damage to the brassica crops.

My typical interventions are BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), hand picking and row covers. For more detailed information I highly recommend this short podcast from Epic Gardening How to Get Rid of Cabbage Worms Organically.

Here’s what I’ve been using lately when I’m working in the garden. It’s a child’s butterfly net and my personal challenge is to capture those elusive cabbage moths. Occasionally, I smash one between my hands but I’m more successful with the net. Once captured in the net I decimate it but admittedly, sometimes they escape. Spraying with BT every five days is a more reliable option which I’ve been doing.

Moles disturb my seeds and seedlings. Though we placed half-inch hardware cloth at the bottom of the raised beds, they found their way in. They’re in search of sow bugs, earthworms and grubs that might arrive with my compost additions.

The damage here looks minor but day after day, the emerging carrot seedlings or small lettuce transplants may not survive.

When I planted radish seeds this week I angled wooden skewers under the row of radish seeds to discourage the moles. Several days later, there is no mole intrusion evident and the seeds have sprouted.

When I planted celery today I slipped wooden skewers and small pieces of bamboo beneath the rootball to discourage the moles. This technique has been successful in the past with my brassica crops.

I’ve written about sow bugs in Garden Hacks—1 but the compost I’m using now for topdressing is riddled with them, and many very tiny ones. I resorted to using a fine sifter to eliminate most of them. As I prepared the soil to plant radishes there were still some larger ones dashing about. I grabbed the vinegar and sprayed them. Since vinegar is only 5% acetic acid it is easily diluted with irrigation before I plant the seeds.

Here are a few of the sow bugs that succumbed to the vinegar spray. Tell me in Comments about your favorite garden hacks.

A while back I recommended Lemon Essential Oil for the control of aphids on indoor gardens, particularly hydroponic gardens, which seem to be susceptible to pests, I have discovered the benefits of Neem Oil as an insecticide…and more!

Although lemon oil DOES kill aphids on contact, it does require regular treatment several times a week because they keep hatching new ones! Because aphids are…