what stops the cabbage white caterpillars?

[Deleted User]

Is there something I can buy/use to stop the cabbage white butterfly laying its eggs in my cabbages and destroying them all ? Last year they did just that. We didn't mind it happening once, to help our wildlife, but this year we'd like to actually eat some of our own cabbages:mad:

Jack's_mummy

You need to cover them with enviromesh. And even then pick over them by hand regulary to find the ones that get through/under.

[Deleted User]

Jack's_mummy wrote: »

You need to cover them with enviromesh. And even then pick over them by hand regulary to find the ones that get through/under.

Thanks. I'll look up enviromesh, but they still get in?
Do you mean pick through the cabbages to get any eggs off? Last year they seemed to be pretty well embedded and I think I would have had to take the cabbage plant out to get them all off!

Valli

When you cover them make sure there's a big gap - ie that none of the leaves are touching the mesh.

Jack's_mummy

I had a very makeshift covering of enviromesh last year so a few got through but we managed to pick off the odd few caterpillars before they did major damage. Obviously that depends on how many things you are growing

Vixie_Pixie

we used netting on our cabbages last year but it didn't really work that well! Our cabbages were well and truly munched upon! Might recycle some tights to see if they work as a makeshift covering ... may not work but if not i know its free!

valk_scot

I build a low cage, similar to a fruit cage, from scrap alkathene piping and canes over my brassica bed. Then I cover it with standard 1cm square plastic netting. Not 100% perfect but it's pretty ood at keeping pigeons and butterflies off the brassicas.

foxgloves

You can brush the eggs off quite easily with your fingers....they are usually easy to see as they are little patches of bright yellow globules. However, you generally miss at least one or two and you don't need many caterpillars especially when they have grown to scoffing machine size to decimate a crop. We have lost broccoli, caulis & cabbage this way and on one occasion we'd even handpicked the eggs AND then meshed them but we obviously meshed a few inside and they must have thought all their birthdays & Christmasses had come at once given the mad levels of scoffing that ensued! So we have vowed not to grow any brassica until we have a proper framework for the mesh sorted out and then to mesh them as soon as the plants are transplanted outside. I looked at some of these mesh tunnels but thought they were a bit expensive given that they didn't look like you'd fit many cabbages in them but my firend who has an aollotment says all she uses is short canes set out in a grid across the rbassica bed, each topped with an upside down yoghurt pot to stop the canes poking through the mesh, then she puts a big piece of mesh over the whole thing & pegs it down. We're going to try that this year. She certainly grows good cabbage, so hopefully it'll work for us too. Ours is a wildlife friendly garden & we don't use any chemicals as well as growing lots of flowers that are attractive to butterflies, bees, etc, so it's probably a bit of a double whammy.

hali000

Gardening Naturally sell Enviromesh by the running metre, their prices are the best I have found online plus they have a 10% sale on at the moment

A._Badger

Of course, the answer is to rescind the absurd ban on just about any pesticide stronger than soft soap, that was forced on us by a bunch of non-gardening twits in the EU, who believe the word 'chemical' is synonymous with 'lethal.'

I'm surprised how many are realising that, in a bad year, pest problems can mean the effective loss of entire crops and yet still insist 'organic' is the only way to garden.

Actually, come to think of it, no I'm not. That's the nature of faith, after all.

As I've said before, if people don't want to use chemicals, that should be their choice. And the rest of us should be allowed an equal freedom to choose.

angelavdavis

I can second enviromesh and Gardening Naturally as a supplier - I actually built a cloche out of this using some timber and flexible blue water pipe, but utilised enviromesh instead of plastic as the covering specifically for this job. Environmesh also doubles as an insulator so I found my plants actually grew faster when covered with this cloche too!