Our favorite gardening tool: Chopsticks!

by June

We bee-lined out to the garden after a rain. The Chinese Blues cabbage was riddled with holes. And the wretched slugs were still there gnawing, the nerve. Never fear! The girls and I were armed with...chopsticks!

We pinched up the gooey invaders and hurled them off into the meadow.

Fern: "Look, they're on the kale too!"

Blossom: "Why do they only go for the good stuff? It would actually help if they'd eat the weeds."

Ever since I stumbled onto the Japanese Gardener's post about using chopsticks to perk up his violas, we've been using them for everything. We fish edamame beans out of the inoculant slurry and poke them into the soil with one deft motion. Same with nasturtium and morning glory seeds, oh glory! We scratch the soil before broadcasting tiny seeds and pluck tiny weed sprouts out from among the radishes.

Once in New York City, I saw a woman using chopsticks in a way so clever I thought it could never be topped. She was obeying the "pooper scooper" laws meant to keep the sidewalks clear of dog doo: pickin' up the poopoo, puttin' it in the baggie. But, I have to say, I feel almost as clever clearing the cabbage of pests -- without having to scour slug slime off my fingers afterward. Just wait until tomato horn worm season...