Kitchen Garden Forum

I have protected my cabbages this year with netting and was just thinking to myself how clever I was that they are growing so beautifully, no caterpillars to be seen. Little did I know that the netting didn't quite reach the ground in one corner and would you credit it, a cabbage white found its way in!
Not only that, after (presumably laying some eggs) it remembered the exit route, which entailed walking on the ground so it could limbo under the net and make its escape. Unbelievable! as Victor Meldrew would say!
Moral: Peg the netting right down to the ground.

Mmm, cunning eh? It doesn't stop there either.

Pests can get through netting at the top too. If your plants grow big enough to reach the top of the netting, butterflies will be quite happy to poke their abdomens through the net and lay eggs onto your leaves!

They're not the only ones either. This snail climbed up the outside and doesn't seem too bothered about the net (apologies to people on the forum who have seen this picture before):

We had pigeons find there way in under a corner of nettingThe plot next door found a thrush in its make shift fruit cage too. As they were attempting to release it - it flew out but goodness knows where the gap was as we investigated the area where it had emerged and couldn't find a way out at all.

The birds also develop the techniques of sitting on netting to weight it down and then attacking plants through the holes.

We raised our netting over the brassicas as leaves were touching the netting so the a butterfly could land on and lay eggs through the holes too.

That photo of the snail is amazing! You almost have to say that this snail deserves a well earned meal (but not on my cabbages!)

I want to post to tell you how happy I am that I watch with glee the flutterbies trying to reach my brassicas through the netting.
However, if I do, one's bound to find a way in.
So I haven't sent this post, OK ?

This year I have invested in a lot of anti-butterfly netting and have 4 lots of it. Currently 2 seem to be working, but today I discovered caterpillars in the others. However, I am hoping that this is just because I didn't cover them immediately and they were left for a few days. In previous years, with less than adequate netting, I have found if a butterfly finds its way it it doesn't usually find the same way out - or at least takes a very long time to do that. Enough to kill it. But we shall see.

Something that seems to have escaped notice is that it is possible that the CW Butterflies were chrysalis inside your netted area when you netted it and only had to complete their life cycle to have you totally mystified as to how they got inside your bastion. This is one of the reasons why cabbages should be grown in strict rotation.
JB.

Hi Johnboy.
I dont think the butterfly came from a chrysalis within the netted area. This piece of ground was very well dug over, but you make a good point and raise the question, do cabbage whites pupate in the soil or attached to plants above the ground? I do sometimes find reddish/burgundy pupae about 2.5cms long in the soil and often wondered what would hatch from them.

Hi Marken

The reddish pupae in the soil are likely to belong to this (or similar)
http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?bf=2087

Thanks Alan, I have often seen these moths indoors when the window has been left open and the light on.