Cabbage Looper, and the Cabbage Maggot
Your garden can seem a full line of attractants for pests and bugs when you least expect it. When you do find a little critter in the garden, your first line of defense in going to be identifying and researching the pest.

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006

Cabbage Looper - The cabbage looper eats little holes through your cabbages, beans, lettuces, spinach, even tomato plants and in vegetables like your parsley so it is not just a critter in the cabbages. The cabbage looper actually has a very short life span but they can reproduce so that four or five generations can live in your garden over the span of a summer. One of the best non chemical preventions is to cover your cabbage plants with fine netting that will keep bugs off If you have a small garden, you can hand pick out the cabbage lopper to control the population.

Rotenone is the best dust that keeps cabbage loopers from attacking the vegetables in your garden. The cabbage looper is a tiny green colored caterpillar that doesn't crawl along but rather, kind of loops along. The cabbage looper will turn into a moth with a wingspan about one to two inches across. The moths are actually what will lay the eggs on leaves in your garden and from there the eggs hatch and munch on your garden.

Cabbage Maggot - The cabbage maggot is a worm that squiggles along with out any legs and only measures about a inch long. The cabbage maggot grows to be a fly looking pest that looks a lot like the housefly that every one has in their homes. As with the cabbage looper, the cabbage maggot also goes through several generations in your garden over one summer season. The best way to get rid of the cabbage maggot is to mix wood ashes or limestone in your soil to raise the alkaline and the pH levels of your soil. The cabbage maggot thrives in soil that is not high in alkaline.