Rings around the Eggplants

Today I plan to write about rings around my newly planted eggplants but sometimes my mind takes to free association.  In this case, I thought about a simple and cute nursery rhyme about rings around the roses and a pocketful of posies that turn out to be rather grim.  Life and gardening is not so easy but interesting.

The nursery rhyme dates back to the London Plague of 1665:  the ring of roses describes the red "buboes" around the neck of a person stricken with the disease; posies refers to the herbs that people carried in their pockets to help with their breathing and ward off the illness; at-choo signifies the sneeze that is the first indication of the oncoming illness. (Check out "Ring around the Roses" on the Internet)

The cold weather is still with us but I am pushing and hoping for a warm and sunny spring to come soon so I bought four eggplants and planted them in the garden.  They seemed to be doing fine but the other morning I found one plant broken off as if somebody had just broken it off and left it.  Aha!  Cutworms!

To ward off the cutworms, I cut a small plastic tube into four circles.  I checked the recycle bin for coke bottles or milk bottles that would have served this purpose too.

I further had to cut open the circles to slip them around the bottom of the plants and fasten them with tape.  Don't you think that will work?

These plastic bands need to be anchored into the ground and placed close to the stem of the plant whither it be eggplants or some other plant.

If you think you have problems with cutworms, it is so much easier to slip a round shield around your plant at the time of planting.

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