Are you celebrating Earth Day today? I was planning on it until I looked at my garden again this morning. Mother Earth you are fantastic but I have a bone to pick with you and your little friendly caterpillars that have now grown like a gazillion times bigger since yesterday and have the appetite to prove. Can you please call off your caterpillars? Just until I can eat some of the potatoes? I had to pull up about 5 potato stems yesterday and was almost brought to tears when I saw just how many red potatoes were growing under each one. I would have had approximately 45 red potatoes. 45! Oh Mother Earth, just call the caterpillars off for now and I promise to share my bounty with you! We’ll eat picnics at the beach and even in the back yard. We’ll plant even more flowers and banana palms to make you smile upon us even more. We’ll recycle what we can and bring out re-usable shopping bags everywhere. We’ll sing and dance upon your wonderfully thick green grass that you have blessed our yard with. We’ll do all of this, but only if you call off your caterpillars! I’m just kidding Mother Earth, have a sense of humor will ya?! We’ll do all of this because of what you have blessed us with. But it would be nice if your caterpillars found a new home like maybe in the vacant yard next to us. They have bushes and leaves galore over there and the caterpillars wouldn’t mind relocating.

My potatoes are fighting what seems to be a losing battle.

I tried a quick natural pepper spray on them last night…

Went to check on them this morning and there were still a gazillion caterpillars and now instead of hiding under the leaves, they were all proud and boastful as they were moving all around on top of the leaves. I almost teared up when this just had to be done:

That’s 2 broccoli plants and about 4 red potato stems… and see those itty bitty baby red potatoes? Yeah, still not happy about having to pull those early.

Little buggers aren’t really caterpillars but they’re cabbage worms. You have not seen the last of me! I’m smarter than you and bigger than you.

As for the rest of you… Happy Earth Day!

Tags: cabbage worm problem, earth day, garden pests

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