Protection against budworms

Protection against budworms

Peter Norris

June 12, 2016
With the prospect of a little cooler weather and (maybe a bit) rain in the coming time, I pulled myself together and prepared my biggest cabbage bed. This involved harvesting and blanching the last spinach, as well as adding compost and manure mixed soil from the chicken farm in a dosage of about a 10-liter bucket per m2. The latter work takes place in close collaboration with the hens, who stand on the bucket, on the shovel and on the neck of me to be able to spot any earthworms.

Cauliflower, kale and red cabbage are then planted at different distances. The plants had become somewhat ruffled, and were therefore planted a little deep (which cabbage has no trace of). The rings around each plant are about 5 cm high pieces of downpipes, which form a protection against the budworm. This is the barn owl's immensely ugly larva, which lives in the ground during the day, but which crawls up to the surface at night and gnaws small plants over. Fortunately, it cannot climb the ring. I have only once lost a plant as there had apparently been a caterpillar hiding inside the ring when it was planted.

Eventually, the bed was covered with bionet to protect against both cabbage fly and cabbage butterfly - and then it just runs without worries.