Kitchen Garden Forum

Last year I grew (not very sucessfully) some cabbages. Arter reading about Companion Planting I added to the plot some Nasterstiums. I have never seen so many catarpillars !! It looked like cos I added the flowers they came out. Would the same number have come out too the cabbages ?

Hi Elen

The nasturtiums are meant to be sacrificial to attract the caterpillars to them & away from your cabbages but the only way to protect your cabbages is to cover them with some environmesh or butterfly proof netting held quite high off the plant. The pesky cabbage whites will lay anywhere a leaf might be reachable!

Yep they like your nasturtiums but will also like your cabbages, neither exclusively.

Westi

Thanx Westi,
If I actually get to harvest some cabbage I will be happy. So I will try the companion planting again , armed with netting im off to the plot !!

Elen

Can visualize it!

Westi

I had a similar experience to Elen. Last year while I was on two weeks holiday my healthy sprout plants were destroyed by cabbage white caterpillars and I pulled the plants up in September. In February this year I found some healthy looking caterpillars chomping away on my treasured comfrey plants. They had clearly overwintered due to the mild weather and, more alarmingly, had switched their host plant. I dealt with them imediately and the comfrey is fine but this seems yet another indicator of global warming.