Holey Broccoli Batman – my brassica has worms!

Who knew there is more to gardening than sticking a plant into “well amended” soil, taking a pretty picture and forgetting it till time to harvest. Reality is, the garden maintains its good looks for about 2 minutes before all the daily maintenance sets in: watering, weeding, bug juice, et.al.  Ugh.

Here’s a pretty shot of the broccoli bed all snuggled into it's straw and not a weed in sight or hair out of place.
Ahhhhh...the bliss of country living.

And here’s the closeup.

See??? Holey broccoli! Upon further inspection of the undersides of the leaves, there are these tiny little munchers. You'll have to trust me that this is a closeup, and they are small. This is one of the larger ones. Sortof attractive little guy, really, but alas one of us needs our broccoli and I'm bigger.

I have this stupid rule not to put poisons on my food. The organic pest control team was fired due to a nonobservance of the rules of what should be eaten and what should NOT be eaten. Who knew damn chickens were indiscriminate about those things?

So I started squshing those nasty little worms. YUCK. Bug juice.

As a precaution, I ordered an organic remedy known as bacillus thuringiensis (“BT” for short). Or call it a caterpillar killer!

Safer Brand Caterpillar Killer with BT, 8 Ounce Concentrate

This stuff is advertised like the perfect product:
"kills worms and caterpillar stage insects but has no effect on birds, earthworms or beneficial insects such as honeybees and ladybugs when used as directed."
It has to be ingested to kill the insect...not just "killed by association" of being around the stuff. I'm hopeful squshing will have taken care of the problem, but the bases are covered...just in case. And I can tell you first hand...bug juice is gross.