Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Janeymiddlewife on August 31, 2008, 11:01
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Needed to vent (hubby doesn't quite understand......)
Came back from 2 weeks away, neighbour had watered, all seemed well until I lifted fleece - pesky little critters have decimated my cabbages and purple sprouting broccolii, somehow must have got under the fleece which I'd weighted down with stones :evil:
So do i just give up, sow more in propogator or is it too late - will I be able to or have to buy plants from nursery?
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Uh Oh - nightmare !
I had a similiar experience last year (only from slugs) I understand the cabbage whites are particularly prolific this year.
I spent two hours the other day hand picking them off my brussels and purple sprouting
Anyway, I'd suggest a two pronged attack..sow some seed direct into the beds, and also buy some young plants if you can get them.
Mine caught up last year, but we had a nice warm Sept and Oct which got them off to a flyer.
Good Luck
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I made a startling discovery about cabbage white caterpillars - they can easily move between raised beds (therefore through netting that keeps the butterflies out). They also like nasturtiums and even the poor horseradish has become a meal too :(
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i've watched cabbage butterflies go through netting too.. quite clever as it stopped flapping to nip through the holes.. :(
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my netting has kept cabbage white's out but the whitefly! Don't talk to me about whitefly, if you lift the netting it is like it is snowing...flippin gits
Cawdor
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sow some now in the warm plant out at about 5 inch tall they wil come on .in spring feed them a little sulphate of ammonia to boost them along :wink:
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Gave my catterpillars a free flying lesson today! :lol:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/srebmob/y1pttx-iOD1nx_7V2zl-8uxGPcAlxHO2Xe7.jpg)
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they are a very lurid colour when you squish them !!!!!
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I was just wondering what netting you are all using though as I use enviro mesh and it kept them out. Also you have to keep the netting slightly above the veg otherwise the eggs may get laid through it. The mesh wasn't that expensive.
the veg I didn't mesh i.e. radishes were destroyed by the little blighters.
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do small cabbage white catepillars change colour as they get bigger? from green to brown maybe?
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do small cabbage white catepillars change colour as they get bigger? from green to brown maybe?
This is what the b*ggers look like when they've grown up a bit!
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/srebmob/cabbage-white-caterpillar-o.jpg)
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i have been reading some tips on here and one to keep caterpillars at bay is to spray with a salt solution every other day! :lol:
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thats a large cabbage white isn't it?
i was meaning the green ones - the small cabbage whites
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thats a large cabbage white isn't it?
i was meaning the green ones - the small cabbage whites
But they still look like this -
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/srebmob/cabbagewhite_lge1.jpg)
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thats a pic of a large cabbage white caterpillar, the small cabbage white caterpillar is a lime green. So don't think they change brown are two different sorts of butterfly/caterpillar if you are with me.
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thats a pic of a large cabbage white caterpillar, the small cabbage white caterpillar is a lime green. So don't think they change brown are two different sorts of butterfly/caterpillar if you are with me.
No???
Like these?
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/srebmob/JD500825.jpg)
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thats a pic of a large cabbage white caterpillar, the small cabbage white caterpillar is a lime green. So don't think they change brown are two different sorts of butterfly/caterpillar if you are with me.
No???
Like these?
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/srebmob/JD500825.jpg)
Ohh.. you mean these!! :wink:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/srebmob/JD500833.jpg)
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the solution ive arrived at is this:
I built several wooden frames out of 2.3 metre pallets, using 2 inch x 3 inch timber as vertical corner posts, 18 inches high. I then cover them with orange debris netting, tied down into U staples with plastic cable ties, hammered round the frame bottom boards every 8 inches. The frames are therefore 2.2 metres x 1.1 metres x 500 mm high.
I then bed the frame down on the ground, and sprinkle slugs pellets round.
So far, after having several beds savaged by successive waves of rabbits, then pigeons, then butterflies, then slugs, this solution seems to work and has kept everything away from my spring cabbage, summer caulis and my bed of 96 turnips.
Ive now built a deluxe 3.3 x 1.2 x .6 metres prototype bed cover with an optional clear plastic cover (to make a cloche), additional vertical and cross bracing at every 1 metre, and plastic handles for movinging it. The plastic has net vents 12inch by 12 inch at each end to keep air movement and stop it getting fungussy. The only thing i have spent money on is net and nails.
I will also make a bubble wrap cover for it, as i have experimented with sewing bubble wrap (not easy!) on the sewing machine.
I tried a green plastic net with a 3/4 mesh, and my brassicas got severely eaten until i saw a butterfly fold its wings back and climb thru.
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Thanks for the replies - I'm not the only one then? :)
I've got fleece, so will have to make some sort of fleece/frame i think like Lincspoachers' idea. being on a sloping site doesn't make it easy, so it will really need to be pushed into the ground to prevent the critters from crawling under it.
hey ho - you live & learn :(
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Ohh.. you mean these!! :wink:
(http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/srebmob/JD500833.jpg)
See i had a few of these on my tomatoes in my mini green house. or at least i thought i did. i was pretty sure i hadn't managed to pick them all off, so kept looking every day (so hard to spot!) but then the other day found a couple of huge brown ones too (had been eating the actual fruit :x )
on googling for pitcures, this person seems to have the same catepillar and says it went from green to brown - they don't know the species tho...
http://flowersandweeds.blogspot.com/2006/11/good-bad-and-ugly-brown-caterpillar.html
i just wondered if it was small cabbage white and they changed from green to brown but mayben it was a different butterfly
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the solution ive arrived at is this:
I built several wooden frames out of 2.3 metre pallets, using 2 inch x 3 inch timber as vertical corner posts, 18 inches high. I then cover them with orange debris netting, tied down into U staples with plastic cable ties, hammered round the frame bottom boards every 8 inches. The frames are therefore 2.2 metres x 1.1 metres x 500 mm high.
I then bed the frame down on the ground, and sprinkle slugs pellets round.
So far, after having several beds savaged by successive waves of rabbits, then pigeons, then butterflies, then slugs, this solution seems to work and has kept everything away from my spring cabbage, summer caulis and my bed of 96 turnips.
Ive now built a deluxe 3.3 x 1.2 x .6 metres prototype bed cover with an optional clear plastic cover (to make a cloche), additional vertical and cross bracing at every 1 metre, and plastic handles for movinging it. The plastic has net vents 12inch by 12 inch at each end to keep air movement and stop it getting fungussy. The only thing i have spent money on is net and nails.
I will also make a bubble wrap cover for it, as i have experimented with sewing bubble wrap (not easy!) on the sewing machine.
I tried a green plastic net with a 3/4 mesh, and my brassicas got severely eaten until i saw a butterfly fold its wings back and climb thru.
Pics would be good. :wink:
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i just wondered if it was small cabbage white and they changed from green to brown but mayben it was a different butterfly
Yes I think it must be. :)