All very nice growing cabbage for the cabbage moth worms to eat! That is my story as reluctant to use chemicals and time consuming removing grubs by hand. How do I keep the pests at bay without chemicals? Would appreciate assistance. Thanks for access to a great website also, although eco-tips for pests would be good too with each plant link.
01 Oct 12 Linda (Australia - cool/mountain climate)
I tried everything - eggshells,solar powered flapping butterflies, pepper, garlic plants, etc. The caterpillars still ate my brassicas. I've discovered two things that work. You can plant Chinese cabbage to grow over winter when there are no white butterflies about. This works wonderfully well. The other thing is to cover them with a netting tunnel. We made a high tunnel over the whole garden bed this spring and I'm growing cabbages, kale, etc in a place the butterflies can't get into. We made the tunnel with electrical conduit pipes stuck into metal pipes. If it's ground crawling grubs, such as slugs, use coffee grounds around the plants.
Spray some neem oil or a mix of neem and tea tree oils, diluted in water, once a week. It keeps the caterpillars and other insects at bay. Other "organic" options include Dipel (Bacillus Thuringiensis) or Derris dust. I usually stick to neem but use a bit of Dipel occasionally.
I bought net covers used to protect food from flies ($2 each at the $2 shop) to cover my young plants. Works a treat! Allos sum and rain in but keep bugs out. Protects from white butterflies, snails & slugs without harming them (which is important to me). Once plants a strong enough against attacks, I remove the cover and pop it over other young transplants. Wouldn't cover veges that need bugs to pollinate of course but works well for all others. Hope that helps.
Make a spray using molasses. There are varying recipes out there on the net. I can't even remember the quantity I used last time as I still have 5 litres of the stuff ready to be used but it works. Some people use 1TSP molasses to 1 litre water. I added washing up liquid to help it stick. I would prefer not to use washing up liquid next time as then you can use it as often as you like without worrying about harming the plant/soil. In fact using a molasses spray will do nothing but good for your plants.
Daniel
I was growing cabbage with succes, all I used was a garlic mixed with water spray, and plated mariegold around the vegtble garden, Cabbage was growing in rich organic soil.
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