Caterpillars on brassicas are worse than ever this year

[tallkenny]

Been putting them on the bird table, they don't last long....

[theothermarg]

I agree. the brassica's on the allotment are heavily netted cuz we get year around bird damage here so the seem OK ( we won't talk about whitefly) but the winter cabbages which were in my garden waiting for a place had all the outer leaved nibbled off just could't keep up with removing them. the middles were OK tho and they seem to be recovering now they are in the plot
marg

[Millymollymandy]

Whitefly have just arrived on my brassicas too. They weren't there the day before yesterday (kind of notice these things doing the daily squidge!).

[clare]

Can anyone tell me when it would be safe to uncover my netted brassicas?Do we get to a point when all the pests hibernate?I have had them covered the last 2 years butI have grown alot more this year and I have small plants getting bigger under a small piece of netting and I need to uncover it really....

[Peggy Sue]

Well I netted everything from germination but they got in by the millions and stripped everything. This was just after some other infesting bug had made loads wrinkle up and look like it was in pain.
The big plants were shredded but alive, but any young stuff (Pak Choi etc sewn late) was gone.
So I gave up in july, ripped off the netting and started squidging - reckon I did several hundred a night for weeks. Resewn the Pak Choi under fleece and just ate holey cabbage.

Amazingly it did all start to recover and we got quite a bit of healthy looking calabrese, which I had given up on, and cabbage second growing wasn't so bad (when the cut the top off and quater it to get more cabbage growth).

I had one more caterpillar squidge (yuk that smell) before holiday last week and resigned myself that it would all be stripped by this weekend- but it wasn't! Finally a bit of luck, and I think we will have green enough for the winter (slugs and rabbits permitting of course).

Such a roller coaster, we lost our first germiation, so sewes way too many second time 'just in case', which looked overkill untill infextation when we thought we would get nothing anyway, then here we are with a likelyhood of green enough to attract all the rabbits in the Fens