It’s noon on a Sunday here in north Texas and the temperature has already hit 100 degrees! Crazy though it seems, I planted a couple of “fall” tomato plants this morning and will plant a couple more later this week.

What kept me going were the images that my cousin David had recently sent me from the Shetland Islands. Everything looked so lush and green. As I have mentioned before, he (and his wife, Fiona) have their own set of challenges, one of which is not heat!

Their growing season is quite short and they have very strong winds. To protect the garden, they have erected a 2-metre (about 6 ½ feet) tall fence. Just as they were beginning to have some success, the cabbage white butterflies descended in droves. Almost daily David and Fiona are out there physically removing the large quantity of eggs deposited on the brassica plants (we call them cole crops). Next year they have already decided to put some netting or row cover over these crops to keep the butterflies at bay.

I learned of another pest that I am not sure we have here in our part of the world (and I thought we had everything!). They had noticed several cabbages wilting despite regular watering. When they removed them from the ground, they discovered cabbage root fly larvae. So next year David is thinking he will put some plastic ground cover down and grow the brassicas through slits in it, in a different patch of the garden.

Welcome to organic gardening in the Shetland Islands!