Grow Your Own Magazine

I would like to know please when do cabbage whites stop laying eggs.

I ask this as I want to plant out my spring cabbage but would like to avoid netting. Call me lazy but I dont know when the whites will stop laying, especially with the strange years weather.

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An onion can make people cry but there's never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.
Will Rogers

I was wondering this too Sebbster as I would like to take my netting off!

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Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.
~ Mary Kay Ash

Me too, lazy about netting and all that. I haven't really noticed white butterfly about lately, in fact for a long while now. Does this makes overwintering brassica less troublesome with pesky egg-laying butterflies?

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Food for Free

Pigeons get hungrier over winter!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Plenty cabbage white's still fluttering by in my garden

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Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

Still lots at my lottie too, removing eggs every few days, must have missed a few though, found some right juicy catterpillers yesterday! Kids wont let me squash them so they end up in the compost bin!

I haven't seen anywhere near as many this year as I did last, and put it down to the wetter weather.

I have a badminton racket I let my son loose with if I do spot any, and a pair of scissors for the caterpillars if he doesn't get the butterflies!!

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Veni, Vidi, Velcro.
I came, I saw, I stuck around.

I think I read somewhere that they're mostly all gone by October

They will keep flying for a month more round here. We are having a lovely warm spell and it has brought them out.

If you don't use mesh, just keep checking them regularly and squash what you find. It's not difficult, but make sure you've got the right glasses on!

yep, all the northern butterflies have flown down south, stopping off on my plot I'd say. Hundreds of 'em

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Oh yes, the cabbage whites are still around. Saw several of the little darlings on the lottie at the weekend. Also lots of pretty ones, but let's face it they all make caterpillars so netting is a really good idea.

Given the gale force winds we've had today, probably not alot left up here. Still more coming your way Two Sheds!! Thinking about it, erm.... its a southerly wind, so yours are probably winging their way back here again..............

I suppose I could get the mesh off and do a check each day for eggs. I didn't realise how large cabbages grew and unfortunately my pipe structure under the netting is a little small in height and so the netting is really holding back the cabbages.

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Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.
~ Mary Kay Ash

I am still seeing Cabbage Whites and am picking off the eggs / caterpillars. It's a pain though as I have so many brassicas in the plot at the moment.

One of my projects for the winter is to sort this out with some sort of structure....

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An onion can make people cry but there's never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.
Will Rogers

Still loads around down here. Here's a thought. If the brassicas are touching the netting, then wouldn't the whites be able to lay their eggs through the net. How effective is yours ?

yes, they will easily lay through netting unless it is the very fine "enviromesh" type. There is a compromise - "butterfly netting" which had around 1cm squares. If this is kept well away from the leaves, it is reasonably effective.

Remember, though, that it isn't just cabbage white butterflies that lay - some smaller moths are also responsible.

Thanks for that Cutecumber. I will have to make a bigger framework for next year, me thinks.

I use rhubab concentrate every now and again, they do not like the smell and it dries leaving a residue on the leaves, it gets washed of by the rain though.
Seems to work as the lotty next to mine got some awful damage, you can watch them atempt to land then shoot off next door.
All the best.
Fred P.

Rhubarb concentrate?
I that something you make yourself? If so is it poisonous?

Can't remember where I saw this but some older gardener recommended making a brew of lettuce plants that had gone to seed and spraying on any plants you want to protect, I guess the smell of the bitter lettuce would be unattractive to feed the young'uns and the buterflies would move on to better smelling veg!

I'll try this next year as whatever I cover with, net and mesh, I always get some level of intrusion and end up picking off caterpillers anyway.

KC

An old man told me to put Rhubab leaves in a barrel, top up with water, allow to rot, keep stiring and adding leaves.
Use fluid on Brassicas to stop the white buterflies from landing and laying eggs.
This is my second year at the allotment using the fluid and have had good crops so far.
The resulting brew stinks to high heaven though.
Also seen it done on TV program about allotments recently.
All the best,
Fred P

I have used enviromesh with great success this year - never realised that home-grown cabbage can look that good!

I am picking caterpillars off every week... big ones, tiny ones, eggs. I never thought I'd like large cabbage whites, but they're preferable to small CW, and cabbage moth. My netting is keeping off the large, but the small and the moth are still getting in. I hate all the netting, its such a faff to take it off to weed/pick and then it gets tangled when you put it back on again, and the pests are getting in anyway ... every year I say I won't bother growing brassicas again, but there's precious little else to eat over the winter, so I persevere

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

if you want to know which caterpillar is which, have a look here:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile...terpillars.asp

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

They have done serious damage to my PSB

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I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
W. C. Fields