Anyone w/Cabbage Caterpillar experience?

stanleh

I have these small leaf green (in color) caterpillars on my broccoli leaves that are eating through the darn plant.  I looked in my organic gardening book and think these are what they are and it basically says to pick them off and that's about all I can do.  I noticed some small holes in the leaves a couple days ago but when I was out today to water, good grief.  Those suckers have been busy.

I've had the worst time with caterpillars.  Some sort of fuzzy one ate through some of my flowering plants and then my basil.  I had some other sort of green/black/yellow one on a flowering plant and hornworms on my tomatoes.

I guess I'll plan to pick the cabbage caterpillars of the leaves but it'll take some time b/c there are so many of them. 

Any suggestions on how to keep these suckers off my plants?  Will I even get any broccoli this year?  I'll be bummed if I don't.

Thanks!
Heather

Catlawdy_____

I thought we had slugs and we had someone over yesterday who said it was the green caterpillar.  He said sevens dust will kill them.  I'm not sure if that's how you spell sevens dust or not.

ddumire

I wouldn't put Sevins anywhere let alone on anything I'd eat.  I had a lot of issues with these this year too.  They're the larvae of a white moth that lays it's eggs on brassicas  The larvae can eat a ton of plant in a short time. 

I'm an organic gardener so I find what works best is plucking them off and examining the plant for the egg sacs.  A little mild soapy water can also help, but I haven't found that very effective.  If you diligently pluck off the bugs and kill them (a cup of water with a little soap will drown them) you'll lower the population of adults and keep them from eating your plant. 

The egg sacs are white and fuzzy.

I'm not sure if neem oil will help or not, but you could try it.

Good Luck!