Pesky Pests: The Cabbage White Butterfly

I've encountered many pesky pests in my time and until recently I didn't count the cabbage white butterfly among them. If anything I thought of them as more of a plaything for our cat Jess, who likes nothing better to chase them as they flit about the garden.

However, my attitude towards them this year has changed because I've decided to grow cabbages for the first time*, red cabbages to be precise as I'm really missing the red cabbage and juniper berry concoction which used to be served up at work from time to time.

Owing to the drought and concrete like conditions up at the plot, I started my seeds off in modules at home. I'm pleased I did for another reason: it's allowed me to keep a good eye on the seedlings and to watch out for the cabbage white butterflies muscling in on them. Here you can see no less than 2 types of eggs: the clustered ones have been laid by a large whites and the paler, solitary ones by the small white. You'll also see that I've been a bit tardy in my vigilance as some of the eggs have already hatched out into tiny caterpillars. From my later observations egg to caterpillar can take as little as 24 hours, so regular inspection and egg/caterpillar removal is required before these critters can really get down to business.

I'll be transplanting these out in the allotment soon: I need to construct my protective hoops first, which will then be draped with horticultural fleece to keep the cabbage whites and that other pesky pest the pigeon at bay.

* = which shocked Threadspider considerably last week as she knows all about my 'no grow' attitude towards Brassicas owing to NAH's hatred towards everything in the cabbage family **

** = though shhhh, don't tell him that rocket is a Brassica as he loves the stuff

Comments

  1. Victoria Summerley23 August 2010 at 20:00

    Goodness, I never knew rocket was a brassica. I must stop eating it at once! I was about to say I share NAH's hatred of the brassica family, but I do quite like red cabbage cooked with apple at Christmas. And I like coleslaw.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Threadspider23 August 2010 at 20:10

    Shocked, I was, shocked! And there's another pesky pest up there too-white fly. They are currently infesting my kale and anything else they can get their little fluffy feet on!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mr. McGregor's Daughter23 August 2010 at 21:12

    I'm also growing cabbage for the first time this year. I've got mine in containers. I've let the cabbage white butterflies have their way with it, and so far, they haven't seemed that interested. It could be due to my dismal watering efforts, but only one of the plants is forming a nice, dense head, but then, how much sauerkraut can two people eat?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lu23 August 2010 at 22:10

    I'm so pleased to discover the names of both types of caterpillars. That gives me something to take my mind off the squishing. Yuck.
    And yes, I've got white fly too! How do you keep those out?? More fleece?

    ReplyDelete
  5. VP24 August 2010 at 09:13

    Victoria - I love coleslaw and also cauliflower and broccolli, but so far I've refused to go down the route of preparing different meals for NAH and myself. However, I do really miss these vegetables.

    TS - have you covered your kale with fleece now?

    MMD - ooh sauerkraut. Must make some...

    Lu - fleece does help, though I can imagine the whitefly queueing up to invade every time I pull it off to check on the plants. Lacewings and ladybirds munch on them too. I've got loads of ladybirds up at the plot at the moment so I might sneakily insert some into the tunnel when I plant them out. How about making some sticky yellow fly traps as well?
    Whitefly are one of those pests attracted to that colour...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sylvia (England)24 August 2010 at 09:33

    I did know that Rocket was a Brassica but it was really bought home to me when I started picking off caterpillars! We have seen lots of white butterflies the last few weeks. I am like you I love broccolli, my husband doesn't and as he does most of the cooking...

    LU I have found a product called 'plant invigorator' is very good at killing whitefly. It is easy to find on the net and it feed the plants!

    Best wishes Sylvia

    ReplyDelete
  7. fer24 August 2010 at 11:02

    Hello!

    i am a fellow gardener living in japan, i have been reading your blog for a couple weeks.
    I just wanted to say hi and get to know more people who share the love for gardening
    ~fer

    ReplyDelete
  8. petoskystone24 August 2010 at 13:00

    tried the wee patch out with cabbage. due to soninlaws' puppy trampling seedlings & a stray cat eating them (!), i ended up with a mere 3...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Joan24 August 2010 at 20:32

    I have given up on nearly all the brassicas because of cabbage moths and aphids....I do still grow tuscan kale but the cabbage moths have played havoc again. Those I can leave to winter over, thus killing the caterpillars and when the plants revive for my spring crop it's not so bad. I really should try the fleece...just don't like the look of it, but which is worse...lacy leaves or white fleece?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Esther Montgomery26 August 2010 at 23:21

    I've got red cabbages. They haven't grown much because I haven't watered them. On the other hand, the cabbage whites haven't been laying eggs on them in the way they have on green leaves other years. (Though maybe it's the year rather than the colour?) Some summers, the profusion of cabbage white caterpillars has so disgusted me I've abandoned plants to them. (I like the butterflies though.)

    Esther

    ReplyDelete
  11. VP30 August 2010 at 21:31

    Sylvia - that sounds like a good product to add to the armoury

    Fer - welcome! I do like the look of your blog. It must be quite hard to do balcony growing in Japan?

    Petoskystone - 3 sounds like it could be a good number to have...

    Joan - welcome :) I too don't like the look of fleece much, but I reckon needs must!

    Esther - I like the butterflies too, but not what they're doing to my cabbages!

    ReplyDelete

New comments are not allowed.

Your essential reads

That blue flower: A spring spotter's guide

Image
Spring is a prime time for blue flowers and my daily walks currently have several from the same plant family* lining the local footpaths. As I walked past the Donkey Field the other day, I overheard some children ask their parents** what the pictured blue flower was. It reminded me it's often mistaken for those other familial blues and this time was no different, as they said it was forget-me-not, instead of the green alkanet it actually is. As well as similar flowers, most of these plants are hairy in their nature, flower around the same time, and favour damp, shady places. Many of them are great for pollinators too, especially bees and this week's warm weather has certainly drawn them to these flowers. This makes it even more likely for these plants to be mistaken for each other and it's a great opportunity for me to put together a spotter's guide in case you find the same flowers on your outings. Staying with green alkanet, the key features which set it
Read more

Jack Go To Bed At Noon

Image
Last year this rather exotic looking flower appeared on mine and several other allotments for the first time. Having been stumped (again) by Mr Allotment Warden as to its identity, I rushed home to find out what it was. It's salsify, aka the marvellous Jack Go To Bed At Noon - named as such because its flowers always close by midday. Here you can see both open and closed flowers - making it seem even more exotic and alien than in the first picture. I think this must be the cultivated version because the flower in my Francis Rose Wild Flower Key looks exactly the same in form, but is bright yellow in colour and called meadow salsify . Its other common name is Goatsbeard, which must be a nod to the fantastic dandelion-like clock which forms the seed head. With 'parachutes' like those shown above, who knows how far our plotted plants came from. I rather like the photographic dissection of the seedhead found in this link . Salsify is edible: its lateral shoots and fl
Read more

Red Nose Day - Gardening Jokes Anyone?

Image
The nation goes ever so slightly bonkers on Red Nose Day - hurrah! Previously, it's been very easy to join in - usually via a dress down day at work plus lots of people up to mad things at the station and in the office. Everyone smiling for once - it's a real feel good day and all in a good cause. This year's different - every day's a dress down day for me now - my friend L suggested yesterday that perhaps I could have a dress up day instead and whilst that's a good idea, I confess that ballgowns and tiaras don't really feature in my wardrobe: scruffy student's always been my favourite look. So my Red Nose Day contribution for this year is to compile a list of gardening related jokes. For each one (clean ones only please) you leave in the comments below, I'll make a donation of 50p to the cause. Here's a few for starters just to get you warmed up: Q Why do potatoes make good detectives? A Because they keep their eyes peeled. Q What did the grape
Read more

Salad Days: Mastering Lettuce

Image
I've decided one of my salad challenges for this year is to grow as many lettuce varieties as I can, ready for the publication of my planned Factsheet* later on. The idea is to grow as many of the Tried and Trusted lettuce varieties last year's Salad Challengers helped compile, then provide a visual guide and as many lettuce facts as I can muster. So far I've found around half of those listed**. Then naturally whilst I was out searching - because such is the way with seeds - a number of other varieties found their way home too ;) A couple of weeks ago I sowed 22 varieties***. Just the simple act of sowing them has me intrigued. Why are some lettuce seeds black and others white****? They split into about half white to half black in my sample and as far as I can tell it's nothing to do with whether they're a type of cos, iceberg, or whatever. I sowed them indoors and popped them into a propagator on the windowsill. The soil's too cold outside for sowing
Read more

VPs VIPs: Derry Watkins of Special Plants

Image
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Derry Watkins at her home, garden and nursery - the acclaimed Special Plants - just a few miles along the road from me. I first met Derry at one of her open garden days last year and was keen to find out more about her wonderful garden and running an independent nursery. She specialises in tender perennials and regularly goes on plant hunting trips to find new treasures, particularly in South Africa. As well as running Special Plants and opening her garden under the NGS scheme , Derry holds day courses at her nursery, hosts Special Tuesdays from April until September, lectures and has written a couple of books. How did you find your way from Connecticut to the UK? I'd started a biodynamic vegetable garden in Connecticut and we used to have people come along at weekends to help out. A particular young man turned up: he returned many times and at the end of the summer I married him. So it was all down to love? Isn't that the
Read more

#mygardenrightnow: heading into summer with the Chelsea Fringe

Image
Ahhhhhh, that's better! I love walking through dewy grass in bare feet, not that there's much in the way of grass on my back lawn this weekend. My wild and woolly lawn has morphed into meadow of sorts this month, which even NAH admits looks attractive*. It's also proved a great source for my Flowers for mum project so far, yielding self-sown perennial cornflowers, lamb's ears, and lemon balm in addition to the blooms you can see. These originated from elsewhere in the garden, the ox-eye daisies must have blown in from the A350 nearby. * = he got very stroppy about the weeds aka self-sown foxgloves in the lawn one year, so he's come along a bit since then. Skimble's demanding to say hello to you too. He does enjoy the patio when it warms up. If the embedded video doesn't work try this link instead. The Nectaroscordum are a revelation. I planted the bulbs around 2 years ago, but it's only this year they've bloomed properly. The bee
Read more

The Resilient Garden

Image
  Part of Tom Massey's Resilient Garden at RHS Hampton Court I've been pondering VP Gardens a lot lately. Last year's drought conditions set me off initially, then our harsher than usual winter combined with this summer's flip and flop weather means the thinking continues. It's a huge topic which I freely admit I'm struggling to get my head around. Tom Massey's Resilient Garden  at Hampton Court recently  tackled this topic brilliantly and was a timely interlude which gave me much food for thought. There he encapsulated the detailed research he'd found which informed both his show garden and book of the same name. I think it's one of the most important show gardens I've ever seen. It's clear the way I garden needs to change so that I have my own resilient garden. I haven't worked out the exact details yet, but Tom's book plus a couple of others (see below), alongside the rainwater management handout from the show garden's  sponso
Read more

Testing Times: Tomatoes

Image
  I've run a couple of tomato trials this year. The first is a revisit of the biochar trial with Oxford University I attempted some years ago (with a different organisation this time), and the second is a trial of a water gadget called Plantsurge which I was given to try at Malvern Spring Show earlier this year. Most of you have probably heard of biochar already and the claim that this inert, carbon-rich material can help soil fertility and plant health. The RHS information in the above link says results can be mixed, with reduced effects found in alkaline soils. This may help to explain the lack of difference I found in my previous trial as VP Gardens is on a lime-rich soil. Plantsurge is a different beast altogether. It's a strong magnet which is attached to a hosepipe as shown in the photo above. It's claimed that it softens water, with the result more like watering with rainwater. The higher nitrogen found in rainwater is thought to be beneficial to plants. Gardener
Read more

Chelsea Fringe 2014: Shows of Hands - Episode I

Image
The gloves NAH used to build the raised bed . The effects are L to R, top to bottom:  Original photo, Warhol, HDR, Green tint, B&W, Posterize, Boost, Cross process and Sepia Welcome to Shows of Hands - my Chelsea Fringe project for 2014! As you can see I've been having a bit of a play around in Pic Monkey for my first contribution. You're welcome to join in between now and 8th June 2014. The idea behind this year's project is to highlight the tool most precious to a gardener: their hands. How do I take part? It's simple. All you need to do is take a photo of hand(s) in a gardening context and then share it via your blog or other social media (such as Twitter or Facebook), then make sure I know you've done so. I've set up Mr Linky below for your blog contributions. The Chelsea Fringe photo on the right sidebar links to this post, so you can easily find it again when you're ready to add your contribution. If you share your photo on Twitter,
Read more

Make Use of Mildew

Image
On my garden patrol this morning I spotted some powdery mildew on a couple of my new Verbena bonariensis plants. I suppose it was almost inevitable as I prefer to grow my plants hard - this means no water for them unless they look absolutely desperate. This approach means plants root themselves more deeply and have a better chance of survival during spells of dry weather like we've had lately. However, it also means I run the risk of problems like today's, especially with any garden newbies planted late in the season. We've had a good drop of rain overnight, so this should help my plants survive. I'll mulch them later today to help lock in the moisture as it's water stress which encourages the mildew to take hold. I've also removed the infected leaves and sprayed the rest with a milky drink.* I'm also pleased to find there's a use for my infected leaves. Oliver Ellingham at Reading University has started a PhD - sponsored by the RHS - researchi
Read more