Kitchen Garden Forum

It's quiet in the garden. Too quiet. It's early spring and cabbage white is lurking for kale to feed on. I can feel they are coming to get it, as soon as the kale is large enough.

How do I prevent them from laying eggs and munching on my plants? I thought about putting up some nets, but it's a little difficult because it's all growing in a round container. I'm not a huge fan of pesticides for obvious reasons. Also, I have to remove the nets regularily if I want to pick some kale. Is the only option I have left to remove the cabbage white eggs and those tiny, almost invisible green worms all by hand?

Your best bet is to net them but if a leaf touches the net the buggers will lay eggs through it

robo wrote:Your best bet is to net them but if a leaf touches the net the buggers will lay eggs through it

Yes, that's what makes it a bit more challenging I think. Alright then, going to try to create a net around it.

We always built a sort of "fruit cage" around the entire brassica bed by using tall metal stakes in the corners and sides, surrounding the whole with narrow gauge wire mesh, then tall bamboo canes topped with empty plastic bottles in the beds and the whole covered with double nylon mesh. Very occasionally, a cabbage white got through and then could not get out again, but it mostly worked over the many years we had the allotment.

Monika wrote:empty plastic bottles in the beds

You convinced me, wow! This is an incredible idea. Now I can easily pull the cage off to pick some and put it back on. Thank you a ton for this.

Scaffold netting is perfect to drape over the canes as well & you often find some in skips or you could be cheeky & ask on a building site. It is too fine to let the cabbage whites in, but lets the rain & light in. I always push my canes in at an outward angle to stop the leaves touching it as they will still lay eggs on it if they can, but they can't get in to totally decimate your brassicas. Just for advice use the bottles as Monika suggests, I bought some of those ball things for the tops of my canes but the canes thickness varies & if I could get them on I could never get them off again or they would just fall off if too skinny. Better up cycling as well!

I got scaffold netting 3m x 50m for £30.99 including delivery, from ebay.

Look for Clearance.

I'm going for the hand made construction with electrical pipes in the bed to stick the bamboo frame in, instead of plastic bottles. They are smaller and take up less space in the soil. Having little space forces me into efficiency, thanks for the great idea!

Don't know if this will help got my blue water pipe from tool station around £15 for 25mm x 25m free delivery, this was a couple of years ago.