If you grow a lot of the members of the cabbage family such as such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale and kohlrabi, the evil cabbage white butterly will hunt you down and give you cabbage worms that can destroy your plants. These small butterflies are white with black spots. They will fly over the cabbage family and lay eggs which will then lead to the evil cabbage worm. Cabbage worms are hard to detect because they blend in with the green plants. See if you can find the three worms in the picture above.  In case you can’t find them, I circled them in red in the picture below.
The best organic way to deter the cabbage worm is to use a lightweight row cover or netting.  While the cabbage family likes the cool weather in the Spring, I usually start the plants early so I protect them under a cold frame. When the weather heats up, then I change to a lightweight fabric that keeps out the bugs. By following the above, I had no issues with the cabbage butterly and worm (the evil duo) this Spring and Summer.
I sure had issues when I decided to start growing some broccoli in late summer for a Fall harvest. Here are the problems that arose: 1) I did not put the row cover on the broccoli in time. 2) I didn’t identify the cabbage butterfly that was flying around because I had never seen one before. 3) After I realized what type of butterfly it was, I covered the broccoli with some hoops and lightweight fabric. Unfortunately, the cabbage butterfly had already laid its eggs! 4) Since I didn’t check under the cover for a while, I had many cabbage worms to kill. Yuck!
The killing process includes the following. . .I put on my gloves, pick off each green cabbage worm, put it on the ground and tramp on it. Graphic but effective!
Another bad bug is a tomato hornworm! Yikes!
