WASP, Garden Patrol caterpillar removal specialist

[applestar]

I have been lamenting that there are white cabbage butterflies everywhere. They are starting to lay massive egg dumps -- dozens per leaf and I can't keep up with them.
(Still dithering about using Bt or Spinosad)

...then today I saw a wasp crawl out on top of a broccoli leaf with a mangled caterpillar clutched in its claws. The caterpillar was "bleeding" all over the leaf. I ran to get the iPad and was back in time to capture photos of the wasp bundling up the caterpillar in a neat package in her mandibles and fly away

Later ai saw another/same? wasp flying low, among and under broccoli and cabbage leaves while a cabbage butterfly was also fluttering above the same bed.

[Rairdog]

I went Bt early on to try and keep them from getting out of control on brassicas, strawberries and salvia. These were the hardest hit last year. It seemed to keep them in check and I only see one white butterfly every trip instead of hundreds. I just hit them with Bt again today as they seem to be ramping up and were on the strawberries.

The wasps are on full throttle here also...I just wish they would target the beetles more.

[imafan26]

I have geckos that keep the caterpillars away. Unfortunately they have a taste for earthworms too.

[applestar]

Here's a result of another species of Garden Patrol wasp at work: Braconid wasp pupae spun by the larvae that emerged after eating probably Cabbage White Butterfly caterpillar, though I'm also seeing Cabbage Moth caterpillars now -- it's kind of hard to tell when the babies were so hungry as to finish their meal completely