Fixed cabbage root fly infestation

Emerion · September 2023

I expect this is old knowledge, but just in case someone else has cabbage root fly problems:

Four purple sprouting broccoli were wilting.I dumped them, and their infested soil, into a bucket of water for 24 hours. After this, the leaves had perked up and the grubs had vanished. I removed the very biggest leaves, to reduce stress on the plants, and replanted them away from where they were before. The leaves did sag a little for a day or so, but then lifted again. 4 weeks later, they are thriving and much bigger. I expect they have lost ground over where they should have been, but I’m really pleased. Also the plants were still quite small when this happened as I was late this planting them out this year. I don’t think it would work with big ones.

ColinA · September 2023

I remembered a tip my father used to stop cabbage root fly, which is to spread dry soot around the soil after planting and have not had any problems over the last five years.
The soot has to be weathered outside over winter to remove any acidity before use

Emerion · September 2023

I used to use cardboard or carpet circles under the plants, which always worked @ColinA. Then I switched to fine mesh over them, in order to keep out both cabbage root fly and cabbage white butterflies. That worked for 3 years, but they obviously got in whilst I was weeding this year. So it’s back to the cardboard circles as prevention again. I just mentioned this fix in case anyone else’s precautions had failed, which they do every now and then.

Fixed cabbage root fly infestation

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