Lately, not so much. Pretty much every morning before trotting off to work I happily mosey out to my garden to check, admire and water. The first batch of lettuce seeds that went in the ground never seemed to come up. I tried germinating more in the house, see blog below, and painstakingly planted them tiny root by tiny root Saturday morning. Do you have any idea how small lettuce seeds are? The roots are thinner than a thread. Sunday morning, I go sauntering out in the hopes that the little guys have come up but alas they are gone. Where did they go? There are little footy prints in my garden plot....
I've been none to happy that all my little lettuce seeds have disappeared, twice. And the established lettuce all has lovely little bite marks out of it. Slugs and Lace Worms are the cause of the bites and according to the very knowledgeable lady at Mordigan's Nursery, birds are the cause of my missing lettuce babies. As for slugs, my sister reminded me of last years slug wars and the effective and cheap treatment for that. Please note blogpost The Slug Wars.
So, in lieu of lettuce, I've planted corn and some eggplant, both Japanese and regular. The lady at Mordigans told me it's too late for lettuce, that it will go to seed faster than you can eat it because of the heat. I guess it must be a better fall crop for Southern California. For the corn I'm told that I will need to play bee later on and rub the stalks together to pollinate. This is why it's planted in rows. A friend at work who is from Iowa said that they used to hire kids to run thru the rows and pollinate the male and female corns that were in side by side rows. Of course the question is, how do you tell a female corn from a male corn?
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