Kitchen Garden Forum

Netting has worked well for me too. What I have also done is to plant a few of the brassicas as a sacrifice crop, so they get eaten and the butterflies can't be bothered to try to get under the netting.

See also the thread [in best practices?] on home-made feed using weeds soaked in water. It makes a stinky feed which seems to deter the butterflies!

Does this stinky stuff affect the cabbages? Don't fancy eating stinky cabbages any more than the caterpillars would!

Apparently nasturtiums make a good sacrifice plant too.

The little bighters have got under the netting and have
caterpillars on my swede and brussels. Last year I went
around with a bucket picking them all off but somehow
this year they look bigger and when you pick them up
they curl round and kind of ping off onto the ground -
yukky and leads to escapees.

Can't touch them even with big gloves on so I am
hosing them off and then hoping they drown by puddling
loads of water under each plant as well. Wish me luck
could be a big job!

Westi

I haven't found the veg affected by the liquid manures. I think the insects' sense of smell is much more delicate than ours. That's why we plant htings like garlic near carrots - to deter the carrot-fly because it gets confused by the smell - but we don't smell either plant unless we squeeze them.

I wouldn't believe the organic gardening nasturtium myth if I was you. I'm picking dozens of caterpillars a day off my greens and the nearby distracting nasturtiums are untouched. They are even attacking my Swedes this year, I know they are the same family but they don't usually bother them. Must investigate debris netting - how do you cover large beds 25x10', make water pipe polytunnel type structure?

Hi Geoff,
I do know that Nasturtium do attract Black Fly of all kinds but when I planted a load next to my Broad Beans as a sacrificial offering they preferred the Broad Beans. I ended up with pristine Nasturtiums and infested Broad Beans. Yet the Nasturtiums in my car park were infested with the Black Fly. The BB's were about 200yds away.
The difficulty with Organic Myth is that it is always based on theory not fact.
JB.

Geoff wrote:They are even attacking my Swedes this year, I know they are the same family but they don't usually bother them.

I'm sort of releived to read this Geoff, as we've had exactly the same problem with our swedes.

I took the lid off one of our water butts yesterday and found 32 drowned cabbage white caterpillars floating in the water. I can only assume they were looking for somewhere to pupate when they found instead, the caterpillar equivalent of Davy Jones Locker . Nice one!
Cheers.