When good broccoli goes bad

There's no one to blame but me. That's part of maturity, right? Taking full responsibility for your actions. Or in this case, inaction.

Two loamy beds of broccoli, in their early days protected against the bulls-eye beaks of hungry crows. Watered and fertilized and weeded with diligence and care. A few tight green heads harvested in the late spring and enjoyed with gusto. And now. Disaster.

Tall spikes of broccoli flowers tower over the broad leaves, which are riddled to lace by insects and slugs. Little broccoli flowerettes are brown with fatigue and thirst. Even the cabbage butterflies have abandoned hope and moved their egg-laying operation to more worthy plant life.

How did this happen? I know the rules: broccoli needs to be covered to keep away those pesty butterflies. Actually I like the butterflies flitting around, but not their inevitable children who appear in the form of skinny green worms that are impossible to distinguish from broccoli stems untl they fall off in the pan, cooked through and through. Appetizing, eh?

I used floating row cover (it's just plain old non-woven interfacing used in the garden instead of the sewing room), dusted with Dipel -- non toxic to people and mammals, but lethal to the digestive tracts of worms and their ilk. I just didn't dust soon enough, often enough, heavily enough????

Then there was the HEAT. Broccoli is "cool weather crop." It's been 95 degrees and hotter in central North Carolina, after a fairly moderate spring. I have no sway with weather, so couldn't fend off the smothering temperature spikes. That's no excuse for broccoli-ocide.

The real truth is that I have paid only lip service to my veggie garden for several weeks. Benign neglect is strictly forbidden inside the garden gate. Vegetables demand constant attention or they pout and wilt and/or flower and try to set seed. I can tell when yellow flowers twinkle merrily on top of the broccoli heads that I have lost control. My once-good broccoli has gone bad. No longer edible, no longer pretty. This broccoli is unsalvageable.

The only thing to do is rip it out of the ground and replant. No more broccoli: June is far too warm. I need crops that can stand the heat AND get into my kitchen. Perhaps I can dig up the beds, re-fertilize (with organic fertilizer, of course) and plant my favorite crop: green beans.

Beans have those fat seeds that respond so well to garden soil. Within a few days they pop up out of the ground, already erect and five inches tall with two baby bean leaves. Wow. Semi-instant gratification. Within a month, I'll be munching on pots of tender green beans, cooked just right in the pressure cooker.

Unless I fall off the garden wagon again and forget to pick beans every day. A horror that rivals bad broccoli threatens me if I do not: BUMPY BEANS! Those bulging pods with mealy bean seeds inside are the stuff of nightmares for me. I can't fathom some people who plant beans that act like that on purpose!

Green beans are supposed to be haricot verts--slim and tender. So I'm clearing my calendar in late July for bean picking. I take 100 percent responsibility.