Garden pest: cabbage moth

Getting Rid of Cabbage Moth

 * Today's article was offered by Richard Haigh, and had some minor editing done by Lillian Brummet before publication here. Richard writes regularly at http://the-organic-grower.blogspot.com/ and invites you to read more of his articles about organic gardening there.

You do everything possible to have healthy growth and 'bang' your plants get slammed by some critter or another. This time it is cabbage moth that is causing trouble...

What do you do?

As more and more of us are concerned about climate change from chemicals and the like, we turn to the old ways of control. This means, in general, natural control for all those bugs that help themselves to our crops.

Cabbage moth layers its eggs on the leaves of cabbage, and caterpillars are the result. Rapid loss of leaves from your crop, is the consequence of this.

The best and sure way of dealing with this is to take a bucket of hot water and go round your plants daily and pick the caterpillars off and drop them in the bucket. This is takes time and is unpleasant.

A better way is to trap the month before the eggs are laid. You do this by placing a small board ( beer mat size is ideal ) around the crop area, smear a little treacle on it and you will catch quite a few months.

If you have a large patch of rhubarb, use the discarded leaves to make a strong tea, leave it to cool and pour over you crop, giving them a good soak. The idea here is that the smell that is given off confuses the moth and it will go else where. This must be done every four to five days, more often if it rains.

I have tried this and it does work, only trouble is you need a big patch of rhubarb.

Now this is the stuff that cabbage moth fear because it kills them dead. It is called Fire Spray. It really works well on most bugs and plants.

Fire Spray:

4 garlic bulbs

6 big hot chilli peppers or 3 tablespoon hot chilli powered.

4 squirts of liquid detergent

1 big spoon full of vegetable oil

35 fluid ounce of water ( 7 USA Cups )

Put the whole lot in a blender and then sieve through a coffee filter or some such.

Store in a jar in you fridge with a label.

If your blender is not big enough to take all that water; put in as much water as you can and add the rest after blending.

Put the mixture in a garden spray and do a little trail with it first to see what effect it will have on your plants. Spray it on both sides of the leaves and anything that you are unsure about, spray it on the ground around the plant. I spray it down rat holes and find that they soon move out and set up house somewhere else.

It was my neighbour on my allotment who gave me this recipe; it comes with a warning.

Always wear gloves and eye protectors. Wash your hands after use.

Spray your crop every three to six days or more often if there is rain.

When the cabbage moths have gone, I switch to a much lighter deterrent, preventative spray:

 4 ml natural liquid soap in a two pints of water 

Spray around crops once a week, on both sides of the leaves to keep most pests away.