Brassicas, Beetles, Battlestar Galactica

Brussels sprouts, broccoli, bok choy, cauliflower, cabbage, arugula, mustard greens, collard greens, romanesco, mizuna — Brassicaceae. Probably the most delicious range of vegetables in existence, beautiful to boot. Cabbage is even a landscape staple in many places.... just not here.

They're all descendants of a single wild mustard plant, domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean thousands of years ago and selectively nudged by humans over millennia into wildly different shapes, flavors, and purposes. One plant became an entire cuisine — a tasty, tasty cuisine for both humans and flea beetles.

Flea beetles are a known problem across the desert southwest, and this Tennessee native was genuinely shocked to meet them. They overwinter in surrounding leaf litter and forest edges, emerge in spring the moment seedlings do, lay eggs in the soil, and produce a second generation mid-summer just in case the first round left anything standing. Their fixation on brassicas isn't random — the same compounds responsible for that sharp, bitter, unmistakable flavor are the exact chemical signals drawing the beetles in. They have a plan. The plan is to decimate the garden.

Year one in the Jemez Mountains: the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and greens were decimated. Year two: decimated. Year three, they just didn't get planted. There is kale that keeps coming back on its own — unbothered, unasked, apparently unkillable — but that's the kale's business.

Year four options:

• Build the greenhouse, which solves the beetles, the heat, and the UV that makes everything bolt before it's worth eating. Scheduled for immediately after winning the lottery. Separate entry.

• Don't plant brassicas again, which is at least consistent with recent history.

• Baby a few plants individually through the season in fresh soil with row cover and see what happens.

Currently leaning toward option two with a side of option three for the chaos of it.