Broccoli Abuse!

Today was a gorgeous day here in Central NY.  Temperatures hit 80 degrees and the sun was playing tag with the clouds.  It made me think it was late May.  Being the nice day that it was, I decided that it was time to get the first mowing out of the way.  When the rest of our area was doing its last mowing in late October, we were not. So our back yard was getting scraggly.

I finished mowing and pushed the mower over to the compost bin to empty the bag.  GBaby toddled over with the Mom's Helper (aka middle school gal from church who loves to hang out with G and I love to have the help!)  I plopped in the grass and played with G and turned to look over my shoulder at my rows of broccoli, to see how it was faring in the heat.

This is what I saw. If you look closely you will see broccoli :), broccoli :), no broccoli :-(, broccoli :).  The Garden Beast had chomped all the leaves off of 14 of my broccoli plants!

This is the bed where the Vine Chomper annihilated our green beans last year.  Last year it seemed that citronella was the only deterrent for the Garden Beast.  So, I made super scented citronella chunks and have placed them among my broccoli plants.  I watered the stumps and said a prayer.  I will have to make more citronella chunks before the green beans go in.  Here's hoping it works!