Cabbage White protection

Last year was my first year of growing anything ... 3 large raised beds produced a huge crop ... still have 2 sacks of spuds left ! I was still picking sugar snap peas in Nov.

The only significant failure was Cauliflowers which were ravaged by Cabbage White Caterpillars ... there seemed to be a permanent cloud of white butterflies over all my brassicas.

I need to look at protecting them this year ... any body got any good tunnels I should look at .... cabbage & cauli are easy enough, but broccoli seems to grow too high for the tunnels I have seen.

Advice welcome ... would want a product that lets water through.

 

Hi Sargan,

Thats great that you had such a good first year, i've been doing it all my life & i'm running out of spuds already :DOH::D

JWK is our expert on Butterfly protection. I'm sure he will put you right in a bit.

I generally do brassicas as a winter crop, as my busy time is in the summer & I simply don't have the time to keep my eye on everything. Only hassle I get in the winter is Pidgeon damage. But the plants often pick up again in the spring.

 

Told ya he would

 

Looked at link for netting ... anybody seen any diy articales/links on making up tunnels or similar ?
I had alink where somebody did this with alkathene water pipe .. but lost the link.

 

That's what I do - water-pipe for hoops and scaffolders debris netting (which is cheap to buy, very durable, and small enough mesh to keepo the Butterflies out).

Picture of a 9-year-old hard at work on my blog
http://kgarden.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/brassica-netting-against-cabbage-white-butterfly/

They eye-lettes are big enough to let Butterflies through, but in two years I've only seen one inside my netting.