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No matter how well the cabbage is accepted, with the beginning of summer, gardeners are forced to deal with it more, as a new danger appears – pests. Delicate, beautiful butterflies appear on the site, which are good to admire in the city or on the forest edge, but their appearance in the garden threatens the harvest.
Methods of struggle
The well-known white cabbage (cabbage white) got its name because it likes to lay eggs on cabbage leaves. After a few days, caterpillars appear from them, which immediately begin to spoil the cabbage – at first they only scrape the leaf, and then grow up (up to 4 cm) and devour the cabbage at a high speed. They live 15 – 30 days, and then they pupate, butterflies appear from the pupae, then the whole cycle repeats again. During the summer, 3, and in the southern regions as many as 5 generations can change. Only these green hairy caterpillars can eat the entire cabbage crop in the garden.
But they are not alone! There are also turnips, they are smaller than cabbages, their caterpillars are also smaller, but with excellent appetite. Cabbage moth and cabbage scoop are small night butterflies that also love to feed our cabbage to their offspring.
There are many ways to get rid of pests, it is best to prevent them from reaching your harvest, because cabbage infected with caterpillars should no longer be eaten, it is toxic to humans. Pests do not like strong spicy odors, so you need to plant dill, celery, parsley, cilantro, sage, basil next to cabbage or between heads of cabbage. Slugs, fleas, butterflies, aphids – the most common poachers – do not like the aroma of these plants and their seeds. But their enemies – ladybugs, lacewings, rider beetles, on the contrary, are attracted by spicy smells, this can help preserve the crop.
Marigolds, feverfew, nasturtiums, calendula are good to plant on a cabbage bed, they also repel butterflies and aphids. The fewer cats in and around the area, the more songbirds will be there to ensure that the number of butterflies decreases every day. But if it was not possible to scare away the pests, and they laid their eggs on the leaves, there remains a mechanical way to get rid of them. It is often necessary to weed the aisles, remove plant waste from the garden, carefully inspect the cabbage and remove the laying of eggs and caterpillars that have already hatched with your hands. This is how cabbage and white caterpillars are destroyed, but the green cabbage moth caterpillars are too mobile for a person to notice and kill them all. It is generally impossible to find the offspring of the cabbage scoop during the day, it sleeps, burrowing into the base of the stalk.
Assistants can be brought in for this activity. Wasps and ants feed their offspring with caterpillars and black worms, so it is very useful to lure them to cabbage with sweet syrup, they will inspect the cabbage very carefully and help get rid of parasites. Ants should even be brought with earth from the nearest anthill, they will eat parasites and go back (if the anthill is not too far away).
It is advised to stretch a thin transparent net over the cabbage, so that it transmits light sufficient for growth, but does not allow insects to sit on the leaves and lay eggs. The net will need to be constantly raised higher in accordance with the growth of cabbage, and it will not be able to protect against all pests: slugs, beetles and aphids can still get on the plant.
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Caterpillar remedies
Specialty stores offer many effective pest control products. There are tablets, powders, ampoules, the contents of which you just need to dilute in the right amount of water and process the plants. One tablet or ampoule, diluted in 10 liters of water, may be enough to process 50 m2 of plantings. The main thing is to carefully read the instructions and follow the deadlines. Producers indicate exactly how many treatments and in what time frame they need to be done, the last one can be a month before harvest. If you spray cabbage later, it will become harmful to humans, it will not be possible to eat it.
There are drugs that repel pests that are added to top dressing, they are introduced into the soil together with it, it continues to work all season. Most gardeners try not to use chemistry, they believe that this makes the process of gardening meaningless, and vegetables are definitely unsuitable for food. There are a huge number of folk ways to deal with caterpillars, which suggest using exclusively natural remedies.
Folk techniques
Most often, pests that have already settled on cabbage are fought with solutions of vinegar, salt, ammonia. They are prepared as follows: in 10 liters of water, dilute 2 tablespoons of salt or 1 glass of vinegar (1 tablespoon of vinegar essence), or 50 g of ammonia. Each plant is sprayed with one of the resulting solutions, this procedure is repeated several times during the season.
You can treat vegetables with a solution of baking soda, parasites usually do not like it, and caterpillars generally die if they eat cabbage treated with it. Ash is very successfully used to repel pests. It is added to the ground, sprinkled around the root, and lye is prepared from it to process the plant itself. The lye needs to be boiled stronger, cool it and generously process each head of cabbage – pour at least 1 liter, there will be no harm to the cabbage, but the pests will suffer.
Sprayed to get rid of caterpillars, a decoction of bitter pepper. To prepare it, 10 kg of chopped pepper is boiled in 1 liters of water, insisted for 2 days, then filtered. This solution is diluted before use as follows: 150 ml per 10 liters of water. To this liquid add another 40 g of soap. In general, herbal decoctions and phytoinfusions are very common in pest control. They are usually made from what grows in the garden and is not poisonous to humans. An infusion is made from dried delphinium leaves (1 kg of leaves are infused in 1 liters of water for 10 day, then a little soap is added), chamomile, burdock.
A great effect is achieved by treating plants with infusions of onion peel. To do this, the onion peel must be soaked and infused in water for at least 12 hours, then sprinkled with cabbage. The husk can simply be scattered in the garden; even when dry, it repels insects. Decoctions of tops of tomato, potatoes, as well as milkweed, celandine, and wormwood are very common in pest control. The juice of these plants cannot be called harmless, but these decoctions do not harm the cabbage, and do not make it toxic.
For example, an infusion of potato tops is done like this: 1,5 kg of fresh or less than 1 kg of dry tops in 10 liters of water are infused for 4 days, then filtered. And a decoction is made from tomato tops: 2 kg of dry or 4 kg of fresh tops are boiled for 30 minutes in 10 liters of water, diluted in 3 parts of water before spraying, then soap is added. Even harmless, at first glance, phytoinfusions must be used very carefully and carefully, because it is not in vain that we are trying to get rid of pests with their help.
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