The Wrigglers #gardening #cartoon looks for Cabbage White Butterfly eggs. Basically butterflies lay batches of eggs in their hundreds on the underside of cabbage leaves, each batch contains 20-25 egss in an area the size of a 5p coin. They’re attracted by the mustard-oils in the cabbage family #plants. It acts as a deterrent to predators, making the caterpillars taste bad. Never eaten one, so I wouldn’t know.
The wrigglers are amateur gardeners, for advice from the experts on follow the experts and links below – they know what they’re talking about …
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Companion planting
Planting Nasturtiums with your cabbages, together with netting the cabbages, could really make the difference between a good harvest and a non-existent one.
Grow veg
has an article on this: https://www.growveg.co.uk/guides/confuse-pests-with-companion-planting/
Gardener’s World
Companion planting combinations
find out how to combine vegetables and flowers on the veg plot, controlling pests and encouraging healthy plants.
Green life soil
has a good list for companion planting, suggestions on what to plant and what not to plant next to your prize vegetables:
Netting
The last egg laying of the season occurs in late August to September time depending on weather conditions. The eggs are laid on both the under and upper surface of leaves. The caterpillars emerge after a short time and begin to feed on the leaves of plants, typically members of the cabbage family.
Fine nets with a 4-7mm mesh give good protection against cabbage white butterflies as long as the foliage does not touch the net, and of course bird and mammal pests.
Fine mesh: 0.8mm Good for very small pests such as soil pests such as cabbage root fly too. Birds and mammal pests are also excluded.
Here are a couple of links for further reading,
Garden focussed article on how to treat Cabaage White Butterfly
An English Garden article on how to outwit the Cabbage White
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