Tip of the Week — 5/20/08

Posted in Gardening Tips on May 20 2008, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

Cabbage Worms
Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden.

Cabbages make an excellent early season crop. Plant them in early to mid April and you will have a nice harvest by mid-June. Sometime in May you may see a pretty little white butterfly hovering around your cabbages, and shortly thereafter you will notice some holes appearing in your leaves until the beautiful, glaucous foliage looks more like Swiss cheese. You have cabbage worms. The easiest way to control this problem is to send your kids out and have them handpick the small green caterpillars (the culprits for all the holes).

If you make a sport out of it, the kids will enjoy the game. Sometimes spraying the plants with insecticidal soap or hot pepper sauce helps. What we have found to be most effective is to spray the cole crops (Brassica) with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), soil-dwelling bacteria that are harmless to humans but devastating to caterpillars. This year, in anticipation of the problem, I have ordered some insect netting that will make nice row covers for my cabbages.