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What's eaten my brocollii, cabbage and cauli
Mark Quinney
Posts: 13
in Fruit & veg
Any ideas what has do e this to my new plants and what can I do to prevent it.
i assume the ones in the ground will not recover??
Many thanks in advance
0
Posts
Mine did exactly the same on previous attempts, so far so good this time though. From what I have read on here it may be Cabbage White butterflies, I had no idea they could do so much damage until I read it in here. I think (but someone may correct me) you need to cover with net, not sure about whether they will recover??
I'm still quite new to gardening so no doubt someone else will come along with more advice for you (and me
).
That looks very much like woodpigeon damage to me. Do you have those in your area? If so, the only prevention is netting. Without nets, they have devastated my brassicas in the past.
We do have a lot of pigeons, there is no physical evidence of caterpillars, so it could well be those
I haven't grown brassicas for years, but so far this seems to be working, but it doesn't make for a very attractive garden, but it's quick and easy if you have some plastic bottles to hand. I presume that when the leaves get bigger they are less tasty to the birds, but think I might be tempted to get netting to protect against the cabbage whites.
Yes, that's what wood pigeons do to fields of rape, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflowers etc - but according to DEFRA farmers are only allowed to shoot them if they've tried to frighten them off first
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I didn't realise wood pigeons would do that too, that could be what ate mine,a long with the butterflies
I have got a collection of those plastic bottles going in my GH for when I plant out mybroccoli and sprouts. I said I wouldn't do them again but thought I'd give it one last go
Wilkos had a net frame in for £20, it looked quite big, well big enough to cover my huge crop anyway
I bought a roll of very close mesh from Amazon, very cheap, i had some poles from broken plastic greenhouses so am making an everything proof cage,its too soon for cabbage whites to have laid eggs and then hatch out, must be birds.
Apologies Mark for my rubbish advice, I told you someone more in the know would help
It must have been an old article I was reading 
I use mesh, but also attach shiny silver plastic ribbon to it to make sure the birds can see that there is a barrier; I would not like to have to disentangle a pigeon from the mesh
I also use slug pellets, as snails and slugs can do an awful lot of damage to young plants at this time of the year.