Help! Caterpillars eating all my broccoli like mad.

[nickolas]

Can anybody please help me with some info on how to control my caterpillar problem? Sorry I don’t have any pics of the Caterpillar’s and I don’t know what type of Caterpillar’s they are, but the one thing I do know about them is that they love to eat all my broccoli.

[rainbowgardener]

I'm thinking likeliest would be cabbage loopers/ cabbage worms. Are they

Slender green ones like this?

http://www.infonet-biovision.org/default/ct/108/pests

or this

http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Cabbage_worms/


Top one is a cabbage looper whose adult is a nocturnal brown moth

Second one is a cabbage worm whose adult is the common cabbage white butterfly. If you've seen the little white butterfly floating around your garden, that's what you have.

If you don't have a major infestation, hand picking is the easiest control method. If you have a lot, you can treat with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis sold as Thuricide or Dipel - it's a bacterium that infects the caterpillar, but doesn't harm anything else).

Your broccoli is still edible. After harvest, just soak the heads in salt water for a minute and that will get the caterpillars out.

Here's an article about cabbage worm control:


organic control of cabbage worm

[PunkRotten]

I have been having trouble with the cabbage worm all Fall. They seem to be less active now. I don't see the White butterflies anymore or as much. I have just been checking everything and removing by hand. Next year though I gotta take some preventive measures. Maybe add some plants that attract their natural predators.

[TexasGardener99]

You need to put some small netting to keep the butterflies from landing over your broccoli. Once broccoli is big they don't hurt it much. I had same problem and netting was savior last year.

[ruth4520]

Hi,

Have you ever tried a organic garlic spray? I have tried it on some things but not broccoli. It worked on somethings we tried it on but not others. You can buy it on Amazon and in some shops.

[rainbowgardener]

You can make your own garlic-pepper spray. Type "garlic-pepper spray" in to the Search the Forum Keyword Box and find lots of different recipes and stusff written here about them.

[Lianne]

thank goodness for this thread! do these worms also enjoy fruit? today i found a skinny green caterpillar face-first in a newly developing strawberry. the whole front of the strawberry was gone. I'm afraid he'll come back and sabotage all of my future fruit! I also found one crawling along a stalk on my grape vine, which does not have fruit yet but is leafy green.

[rainbowgardener]

No as the name suggests, the cabbage worm and cabbage looper are pretty specific to things in the cabbage family, including broccoli and cauliflower.

But I'm sure there are plenty of other things that like to eat strawberries. Skinny green worms are most often caterpillars, meaning if left alone they will eventually turn in to a moth or butterfly.