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Don’t play with your food!

It’s true what they say, you are what you eat. If you are a caterpillar and you eat cabbages, you taste and smell bad to predators. You are a survivalist!!

… or more importantly, don’t play with other people’s food!

It’s no laughing matter, when Cabbage White caterpillars destroy your cabbages and brassicas. Look at it from a worm’s eye view, and it is a bit funny. The Wrigglers #cartoon to laugh at the state most #cabbage caterpillars leave your vegetables in.

Can a caterpillar be a Jedi warrior? George Lucas, if you’re reading this ….

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.

#Nasturtiums are the perfect companion crop – part of the cabbage family, they are just as tasty to the Cabbage White caterpillars as cabbages themselves.

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,

Cabbage caterpillars

Garden focussed article on how to treat Cabaage White Butterfly

An English Garden article on how to outwit the Cabbage White

#cabbagewhite #gardenpests #cabbages #brassicas #butterflies #butterfly #nature #macro #insects #naturephotography #butterfliesofinstagram #insect #art #flowers #wildlife

#nastursiums #companionplanting

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