Anyone else finding caterpillars?

Yolina

Yes I know it's end December :eek: Something had been munching on one of my hellebores and given the way the leaves were being stripped, I thought it looked like caterpillar damage - found 2 of the blasted things yesterday and another one tonight and frankly I still can't quite believe it. Granted, they weren't the most lively of caterpillars (even less so now :rotfl: ) but still...

jusnoneed

I was amazed to find some on our Kale the week before last, thought after the hard frosts we had a couple weeks before would of seen them off.

Helen2k8

Found a little bright green blighter the other day. I flicked him towards the resident blackbird

jfdi

Curly Kale today! And the !!!!!!s had been in the fridge (bagged up) a few days since we picked it at the lottie.

As well as the caterpillars I had wee slugs & wee snails! Real microcosm of garden pests!

The kale was yummy tho with lotsa gravy on it.

choille

I found a couple of gut big uns - the huge brown hairy sort we get here. The Teddies of the bug world. I gently lifted them off the track before they got squished.:eek:

lostinrates

We had what I think was a great empower moth yesterday. Very odd.

Yolina

I found a few more since my original post but I think I got them all now (probably about 10 in all) as there has been no further damage for about a week. Got rid of a few slugs too... Oh and my flat, and therefore my terrace with all the plants, is on the 2nd floor - you'd think it would be reasonable safe from some pests but for the 14 years I've been here, it's been a constant fight against mostly snails, slugs and vine weevils :rotfl:

choille

Do you think the compost you use maybe has eggs in? Or where you buy your plants from has eggs in? If you buy plants rather than plant seeds IYSWIM. Sounds odd that they are up on the 2nd floor.

Yolina

I think it's just mostly that the development was built some 20-odd years ago and we do have a lot of established greenery about, also pretty much all the flats had a large plant container (1m x1m x1m) on the terraces with some low-maintenance stuff planted at the time. Most people don't really seem to look after their plants that much (or just replace stuff if it dies) and probably aren't too clued up about pests, so all it takes is a few of the blasted things about and it's quite easy for them to spread.

I do check all new compost and new plant roots (I planted most of my stuff many years ago obviously and everything was "clean" when planted) and use nematodes to keep things under control on my patch but unless *everybody* does it, then the weevils/snails/slugs are here to stay unfortunately.
And then there's all the flying fiends and quite obviously being on the 2nd floor makes no difference to these :rotfl: