[rainie]

That dreaded word - sorry people. Just thinking ahead.

Are there going to be caterpillar eggs in the soil of my raised beds? If so, how can I break the cycle, besides the crop rotation and pulling them off plants when i see them? I know the birds remove some and hopefully this cold weather we had has finished a lot off, but I reckon there will be loads still there.

[DD.]

You won't have eggs over winter.

Some butterflies will hibernate or will over-winter as chrysalises.

Despite the best efforts to rid your locality of them, you won't stop them flying in! That's where netting comes in useful.

http://www.britishbutterflies.co.uk/asp/winter.asp

[Kleftiwallah]

If you intend to try and keep away from chemicals, I'm afraid it is visual vigilance and pick them off the brassica leaves either as eggs (groups of tiny orange balls) or pick off the caterpillars and leave them on the bird table, the tits will love you for them.   Cheers,   Tony.   (visual vigilance)  anyone's spell checker working ?    


Mine is! - DD.

[savbo]

you'll also probably have some moth caterpillars overwintering in the soil - sometimes lumped into the general name of cutworms. Digging over will expose many of these and the birds can get them or you can pick them and put them on bird table... not all of them cause damage but there are so many species and they're so tricky to identify it's probably better treating them all as potential pests.

Or, as we did, you can keep them in a jar with some soil and some plants and see what they change into...