Kitchen Garden Forum

Does anybody know how long it takes for a cabbage white butterfly to lay its eggs on some greenery? We seem to have so many around at the moment and every time I see one alight onto a vegetable leaf I feel bound to rush and chase it off for fear that it's laying eggs. You can't net everything in the garden and I never know whether they've paused on something to lay eggs, or are just having a rest for a few seconds.

We cover with anti-insect netting and some still seem to find a way in. Just the odd one - which I have seen desperately trying to escape. I just hope having realised that it is trapped it is too worried to try and lay any eggs and is concentrating on escape. If not I hope itsa male but I'm not sure they would be interested in brassicas - too busy sipping nectar. I just don't know how it finds its way in there in the first place!

As for how long it takes I guess its the same as how long is a piece of string. The butterfly has to find a good place to lay its eggs and then I would imagine the process is fairly quick.

Small Whites only lay one egg in one location but Large Whites lay in clusters. So I suppose it takes longer for the Small Whites to lay a large amount of eggs!

I was watching a cabbage white flitting among my cabbages yesterday morning and it just took one second to lay one egg, and as I went to rub it off the leaf it had just left it was busy laying another one somewhere else. I was trying to remember which leaves it had visited so I could rub off the offending egg but it beat me! GRRRRR.

Since posing this question I watched a large cabbage white descend on one of my kohl rabi leaves. Since I'd cleared them of eggs the previous day I caught this little perisher on the spot and it had taken less than 30 seconds to lay a cluster so it just shows how quick you have to be to catch them in the act.. I hadn't realised the difference in egg laying habits between the large and smaller cabbage white so thanks for that information glallotments. It's difficult for me to net my greens because some of them are grown mixed in with flowers in one border but I've now left a plastic fly swatter out on the garden table so that I have a deterrent handy.

The small white's individual eggs are harder to spot to rub off too, and the single caterpillar is almost perfectly matched to the colour of the cabbage or whatever it is on. I wonder if that is why they don't seem to do so much damage to the red cabbage and purple kohl rabi?

I've noticed lots of wasps searching for caterpillars, so they seem to be cleaning them up for me.

Sad I know but I captured a few large white caterpillars and popped them in a large jar to photographs the life cycle for an article for my website.

Only one of the caterpillars actually survived to butterflyhood. The rest had been parasitised by the ichneumon wasp. Grubs hatched out of their bodies.


It would be a bit late for saving brassicas as by the time the grubs kill the caterpillar they would have done their damage but it does help keep down the numbers especially as the caterpillars are unpalatable to birds etc.

Gruesome but if it you see a cluster of yellow cocoons alongside a dead caterpillar leave them to hatch as they are our allies in caterpillar wars!!

(BY the way Google Chrome doesn't work for photos).