Cabbage worm on the unsderside of broccoli.

Bugs

June 9, 2019 Marcy

Let’s talk all the bugs that are currently in the garden and some quite obviously eating my veggies!

Cabbage Worm

Cabbage worms have been attempting to overtake my broccoli, cabbage, and kale, in that order. We first found them on the broccoli. I have a total of 6 plants growing in 3 tires. Not sure tires are the best choice for broccoli, but more on that at a later time. I have been picking them off by hand checking it at least once, often twice a day. It started finding probably 3 worms on the 6 plants each time. Not a big deal.

Then it moved to the cabbage. First the green cabbage, again finding probably 2 worms total on the 4 heads each day. After a week or two doing this I was picking a few less each day. But surprisingly it moved to my red cabbage. It this point it hadn’t touched the four heads I have. I probably picked 1 worm a day off the heads. It was about this point I noticed other bugs around the garden so I needed to have a more practical, natural solution.

One of the quickest and easiest tips I found was putting a few drops of soap in a spray bottle with water. That sounded ease enough, but I also found a tip to sprinkle flour on your plants. Well that sounded super easy & I knew exactly where my flour was. A spray bottle could be slightly harder to find.

Out I went and sprinkled flour on the leaves of my broccoli, cabbage, and kale as the sun began setting. By this point, I found some on those too. Clearly, this is a foe to Brassicaceae.

Next day, no new damage. No worms. Maybe this has worked. Three days in, no new damage. We will see.

Mottled Tortoise Beetle

My best guess on this guy (or gal) is the Mottled Tortoise Beetle. Also a foe. I have also seed Golden Tortoise Beetles. They are a golden beetle about the same size as the mottled tortoise beetle. They are a little quicker and fly away before I can get a picture of them. This little critter has been munching on the leaves of my sweet potatoes for a month. Almost as soon as they were in the ground, there were holes. My primary removal method has been grabbing them and squishing them. I also have basil in a pot near them, but they are not really growing very fast. I would say we have had a slightly cooler than average and wetter than average late spring, causing the slower growth.

Next year I plan on starting the basil indoor sooner. I may have had my seed area too cold before moving things outside. My seedlings definitely were slow growing after germination.

For now, I will continue squishing these creatures. The plants are starting to take off a little more. As long as I am on top of them for a while, I think the plants will be ok.