Kitchen Garden Forum

I have lots of little moths in the veg garden, they aren't much bigger than clothes moths. They are mainly near the Brassicas and when my wife picked some Sweet William today (they are in the same bed) clouds of them came up. When I try and look them up everything I come up with is too big. Any ideas?

No idea what they are as yet Geoff, I have them this year as well.

On a recent visit they seemed to just want to get on the cabbage but that was two days ago so today could be a whole lot worse.

A closeup photo with something for scale might give someone a chance of identifying them?

Now there's a challenge! Couldn't find any meths but petrol worked. Even more today on salads as well.




PS : resilient little buggers, went back to where I had been photographing them and they were coming round, petrol had only stunned them.

DAN3008 : Have you seen any little moths, one site I was reading said that leaf miners are the larvae of micro moths. However, I haven't found any leaf miners.

Dear Geoff,
these look like diamondback moths (AKA cabbage moths). Not good. The good news is that there are things out there that will help to control them.

First the adult moths like to lay their eggs on hairy bittercress plants; the bad news for the caterpillars is that they don't like eating HB plants and will die. So don't be too eager with the hoe and brushing against any HB plants will help to attract the adult moths by releasing the scent of the plants.

Pheromone traps are out there for these pests; how effective they are I couldn't say, but nothing ventured....

That old standby fleece should keep the little beggars off the cabbage plants.

Hope this helps,
Sally Wright.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamondback_moth

I'm not sure about this at all.

My moth knowledgeable son (an RSPB moth recorder) tells me that a veritable 'storm' of diamondback moths has invaded Britain this year from the continent, so it could well be them, Geoff. Whether they harm vegetables, I do not know.

I thought I replied a while ago but it isn't there.

Thanks. My main weeds are Shepherds Purse and Bittercress (probably more SP but I don't look that carefully) and I do hoe them. The Brassicas are covered by butterfly netting which I guess might be making things worse, they can get through but birds can't.

From the wiki entry it looks like the mild Winter could have contributed but the fine Spring may have helped migration. We have Painted Lady butterflies already which may favour the migration theory. Not seen any damage yet but again the wiki article suggests it might not be that obvious.

Looks very much like the same as I have.
They seem to want to get at the spring hero cabbage in preference to the greyhound
Slightly stupid of them because the net on the greyhound isn't as fine and would not be a barrier.

They are about 1cm long and not much more than 1mm wide when wings are folded, greyish brown in colour.
Didn't think the wing shape was like the wiki pics though, more delta shaped like Concord wings I thought but at the time I wasn't looking closely

Was going up to deal with them this morning but it's tiddling down with rain

I also sent the photo to a moth site (ukmoths dot org dot uk - can only put one link in a post) and they agreed with the identification.

Today there is this story that says they are damaging http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36516619 - bit slow on the uptake, you heard it here first!

If we vote to come out of Europe will it stop them coming over I was only thinking as Europe gets blamed for everything

Robo, behave.....

Watch out!!!
Today an alert has been issued to the horticultural trade: the vast influx of diamondback moths is settling on brassicas. My son's colleague who grows his own vegetables has found their eggs on his broccoli!!