Thursday, May 23, 2013

Netting Brassicas


In Perth these little critters can turn your much loved brassicas in to lace. In seasons passed I've totally given up on broccoli and caulie crops because of them. In other parts of the world where its cooler frosts kill the moths and people are advised to wait until its really winter to avoid them, but here we have them all autumn, winter and spring. Bastards. 


We've tried a few hippy solutions like leaving egg shells or bread ties on sticks to repel the moths to no effect. I've sprayed with Success before and it does work pretty well, but I've been keen to try a greener solution - that works! And here it is...netting them. I was so impressed with our apple netting last year, surely this will work to keep cabbage whites off the barrassicas. I used an old mozzie net that we never bother using and tied it up to the grape trellis. I weighed it down with bricks, but you could just as easily peg it.



It might look a bit strange but I really reckon it will work. The only problems I foresee is that:
1.  I may have been a bit late and there might already be eggs on the leaves that hatch in to hungry little caterpillars 
2. It might shade the plants too much. Even in winter Perth is pretty sunny so I'm hoping that it might just slow them down a little. 
3. I have to move the net to do any liquid fertilizing and (hopefully) to harvest my bountiful unblemished broccoli. 

But its worth a shot. We love broccoli!

6 comments:

  1. I reckon we pretty much need to net our entire gardens. If enough of us do it it will help the albedo effect!

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  2. This is the first year that I have netted my Barrassicas ( I am from Canberra ) and it has worked very well. In previous years I did the tricks you tried and spent most of my time inspecting the back of leaves and squishing the little buggers.

    I find once the plants get big and healthy you can take the net off as the plants are tolerate it - makes it easier when fertilizing.

    Being from Canberra, our broccoli is almost ready

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    1. Hi Kurt, Great to hear you have had success with this method - I hope we do too!

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  3. I may have to give this a go - I always try for broccoli and broccolini but I'm yet to have a year where it wasn't munched to bits!

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    1. I think its worth a try, good luck Shannon.

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  4. Our vegetables are netted to keep the birds out but the holes are too big to stop the cabbage moths. In previous years we would inspect every plant daily and squash the caterpillars. This worked well until this year when some plants were invaded by a stripped caterpillar that also produced a small web. We really struggled with these. Then we tried Dipel. It came as a powder which we dissolved in water and sprayed each plant. Problem solved. Dipel is a bacteria that affects only Cabbage Moth. When they eat the leaf it gets into their gut and kills them. We still dispose of the odd caterpillar by hand and only resort to Dipel when there is a bad infestation - don't like to overdo a good thing.

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