Long Island Gardening Community Resource

A few weeks ago, I noticed little holes in my brussel sprout plants and then cabbage plants. They were small holes. Until one day they were not small holes anymore. So as I was perusing some garden blogs, I came a across Marks Garden Desk’s Article, Organic Gardening Techniques Don’t Always Work and there I found my answer the what had been eating my planties. It’s those pesky pretty little cabbage worms. Thanks to Marc’s article, I knew they were able to hide in broad daylight. It seems their green color is an amazing camouflage and makes them hard to spot even though they are sitting right in front of you, just hangin on the leaf.

So upon my investigation and my new found knowledge of how to spot them, I went hunting. Boy did I find loads of them, and I don’t have that big of a garden. I was amazed at how many there were.

Well, not that amazed, considering the amount of my plants they had eaten, bastards.

But I could not bring myself to kill the little suckers. They were just too damn cute. So I walked over to my backyard fence and tossed em into the parking lot (near the LIE service road) to fend for themselves. Let’s see how long it takes until they make their way back in. If they do, watch out! They will get a good stomping.

Oh, I could just use BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), which is used by organic gardeners. I used it once to get rid of Colorodo Potato Beetles on my crop of Potatoes last year. It worked good.

Followup: Well, its two days after my initial cabbage worm investigation and each day I have pulled more cabbage worms off of the kale, brussel sprouts, and cabbage. There were not nearly as many as my first findings, but I hear they grow fast and eat a lot. They are ruining my crops. Well, hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with them. I have yet to kill one. I can’t say the same about the fruit flys in my house though. There was a massacre this afternoon.