I Have Hornworms

I should say, my tomatoes have hornworms. This was the first year here in the desert I’ve successfully brought tomatoes from seed to fruit. I was so humbled by previous efforts that I transplanted fifteen tomato plants, four different varieties, suspecting most if not all would die. Of course all survived and fruited, and the race was on to think how to use them all (or who I could dump them on.)

Enter the hornworms. At first, I noticed the top of one plant stripped of all leaves. I hunted for the culprit and found a big, fat hornworm. Uh oh.

Of course there’s a process for dealing with hornworms, both for after they’ve appeared and for preventing infestation in the first instance. Hand-picking, insecticide applications, interplanting techniques, introduction of beneficial parasitic wasps or different insects to manage the larvae, adding chickens or some other birds to do the insect-plucking, and, always an option, you just let the hornworms enjoy the buffet and call it quits on gardening.

Hornworms are just one of the virtually limitless afflictions you might have in the course of trying to garden and not actually the worst one. Hornworms are easy to spot, and they don’t have any way of fighting back when you grab them barehanded. But, if you don’t catch them in time, they might take your highly anticipated tomato crop right from under your nose, and if they are joined in the garden by cabbage moths, flea beetles, calcium-deficient soil, squash bugs, too much or too little sun, too much or too little rain, voles, mice, rabbits, deer, (I’m just getting started), you might rightfully reflect and express some amazement that our earlier human ancestors managed to feed themselves through these domesticated means without the benefit of grocery stores, the internet, seed companies, or the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

I’m always on the fence between getting out of gardening altogether and double-downing to some version of trying to produce 90%+ of all the food I eat. Grocery stores with their cheap, abundant food and being able to take a summer vacation are reasons that certainly favor getting out of gardening; the taste and nutritional density of homegrown produce and the pleasure gleaned from the seeming magic in the growth cycle favor the ongoing pursuit. I might just be hopelessly wired for the agrarian, self-sufficient life of voluntary suffering.

Back in 2005, head swimming with Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin as role models, I started a Community Supported Agriculture business in the Bismarck-Mandan, ND area. I found fifteen willing subscribers that first year, all of them knowing they might not get a single green pea for their money, but nonetheless wanted to support local, organically grown vegetable production. Such are the real saints on the planet.

I lived in Mandan (in town) so I set up a “greenhouse” in my basement and seeded propagation trays. I bought grow lights. Aphids appeared. I bought a fan and plastic. Mold appeared. The fan dried out the soil and seedlings shriveled. I turned down the fan and watered more. The little seedlings came back but then the leaves turned yellow. Too much water. Why, o, why was this so dang hard?

It’s been nearly twenty years since those early days, and I can only laugh recollecting all the horrors of the first season, all which worsened and compounded  when I actually started working the one acre plot someone allowed me to use at the edge of field in the middle of the Heart Butte River hills. I was trying to finance all this with a full-time landscaping job, so I’d build retaining walls and lay sod and push wheelbarrows full of rocks from 6am to 4pm, drive the 17 miles out to the plot, try to get something planted or figure out why the solar pump wasn’t getting water from the stream or try to fix the holes ripped in the deer fencing by the wind or the deer (note: deer fencing is no obstacle to deer), and the weeds! My god, the weeds!  It didn’t take long to figure out I was in deep doo-doo. I shudder still, feeling that shame of such a whopping public failure, even if that public was fifteen or so very empathetic and supportive humans. Subsequent years went a little better, but for every problem I solved, something new monster arose requiring time or money, both in short supply. Worse still was when a fix for one thing caused some new heinous problem, like when I learned in my new organic farmers course in Medina, ND, that I should mulch heavily with hay to suppress weeds and retain soil moisture. I bought a couple round bails, laid it on thick between the rows and plants, and voila, created the perfect conditions for a slug infestation. Ah, yes, the adviser said, small detail: you must use timothy hay, not straw bales. The grass-based hay will heat up enough to kill slugs. Straw won’t. And if you didn't before, now you and I both know the difference between straw and hay.

Alas, the year of the slugs was already in progress.

Over the years, gardening has provided a real ass-kicking. I’m in awe of those who prevail, those wily masters, and even those who seem oblivious to everything I’ve mentioned in this post, somehow able to throw seeds in the ground willy-nilly and suffer nary a loss. For the rest of us, we can turn for comfort to the brilliant bit from the Car Talk guys about the cost of growing tomatoes, a bit that simultaneously has me in stitches laughing while nodding knowingly.  A listener sent them a letter in response:

Dear Ray:

Recently on the show you mentioned the cost of growing tomatoes. With all due respect, come on! I find it difficult to believe that the cost of each tomato you grew is $11! That sounds way too low to me!

So far, my expenses are: a Bobcat 863 to clear the plot, $27,000. A dump trailer to haul in manure, $7,000. And 10 tomato plants at $6 a piece. So far, I have gotten two beauties and four more are looking hopeful. At this point, my beefsteaks are $14,000 a piece!

Sincerely,

Tim RawlingsCody, WY

As we roll into September, my northern kin are nearing first frost dates and starting to pull the spent plants, while down here in New Mexico, the raging heat yields to the amiable temps of autumn and a familiar itch rises: should I do another planting, some cold tolerant crops like radish, arugula, kale, spinach? Maybe some root crops like carrots and beets?

And by the time I weather whatever failures this will entail the seed catalogs of January will trickle into my mailbox and spring planting fever will take hold once again.

They say the best mountain climbers are those with the shortest memory for the inevitable sufferings involved in every ascent. So, too, methinks, for the would-be gardener.