Little green caterpillar found ON the kale tulle cover (central bed)

Interesting!  Found a little green caterpillar which I would assume is the cabbage butterfly's doing, on TOP of the double-layer of tulle over the kale in the central bed.  Relocated him/her.

Did a harvest of kale after that and didn't notice any worms inside the tulle..... fingers crossed...  Though I had been a little delinquent in harvesting enough to keep them completely from touching the tulle -- but not badly...

Pulled the remaining broccoli -- wasn't doing much

Decided it was time to pull it out.  Did a final harvest of decent leaves and a few flowers.

My hypothesis is that making sure the plant doesn't touch the tulle, by harvesting leaves as well as flowers, worked to prevent cabbage butterfly worms, but the loss of the big leaves had a harmful effect.  As I remember the plants being so much more productive last year, when I allowed them to push up into the tulle by not harvesting any leaves.

So, I'm not sure I'd really do anything differently in future, short of maybe trying to find a way to have a higher / wider tulle enclosure so that I wouldn't have to remove so many big leaves.

NOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!!!! BIG GREEN CATERPILLAR ON THE NORTH KALE (IN BROC BED)!!!!

S/he must surely be the cabbage moth caterpillar!

HOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW?!?!?!?!?!?

I tulled the bed on April 28th, and added a second layer of tulle on May 22nd, and none of the kale/broc in this bed were anywhere near touching the tulle.  

Could it be that maybe...

- I tulled too late?  Moth came along while hardening off?

- This one emerged from the soil this year from last year's life cycle type of thing???

- An egg was laid on top of the tulle, and fell down onto the plant???

OMG

Now I'm going to have a realllllly close look at all my kales/brocs............  

DO I TEAR THEM ALL OUT AND PUT POTATOES!?!?!?!

TBD...

Added second layer of tulle to both broccoli beds and the dwarf kale-chard bed

I just couldn't bear the thought of using floating row cover as a second layer and not being able to peer inside without pulling it aside...  So I'll use this as a trial year, to see if my dual strategy of never letting the brassica plants touch the tulle, plus using a double layer of tulle, might work.

Fingers crossed!

Piracicaba leaves riddled with caterpillars, bahhhhhhh

While watering everything today I had a good look and saw that so many leaves -- even after having chopped the plants down dramatically the other day -- have leaves, and lo and behold most of those leaves had a caterpillar (some wrapped up in a small cocoon or whatever).  I only saw small caterpillars so hopefully they're all recent appearances only from when the plants started to touch the tulle.  But for sure next year I will try the row cover instead of tulle.

I tried removing all affected leaves so that when I see more holes I'll know they're new... though I didn't get all of the northern leaves.

Un-tulled the other kale/chard(/parsley) bed since was touching top of tulle; found cabbage worm

Given today's broccoli fiasco, figured there was zero point in keeping the other kale bed tulled, since those plants are huge now and definitely in contact with the netting.  Hacked a few of the kales down thinking maybe I'd hack them all, then re-tulle in hopes of harvesting a second growth later, but in so doing found a teeny worm hanging fairly low on a plant, so, nah -- my kale season is over for the year.

I'll leave some of the kale plants there to see how they grow for the rest of the season, re: rot etc.

Broccoli disaster!! MOTH LAID EGGS ONTO BROC THAT WAS TOUCHING THE TULLE!! ITTY BITTY WORMS FOUND!

Egads!!!

The piracibaba broccoli plants, which are quite big at this point, have been pushing up against the netting, i.e. making direct contact with the netting.  Well, today on lunch break while having a meander, I saw the moth land on top of the tulled broccoli and lo and behold lay an egg.  Then another in another spot.  And when I started closely looking throughout, there were multiple teeny tiny eggs laid where the plant was in contact with the netting.  I had seen the moth hover around there before but never saw her lay, and figured she wouldn't since she can't curl her behind under the lay the egg on the underside of the leaves.

Sigh.

So -- massively hacked all of the piracicaba plants wayyyy down in size, so that there's a buffer of space between them and the tulle.  I have a feeling they'll rebound and continue producing in a few weeks.  In the meantime, I plan to place new higher hoops, and will need to sow two pieces of tulle together to have a big enough piece.

While hacking the plants down, I took a final-for-now harvest, and did the "soak in warm water with salt and vinegar" thing.  Sure enough, found ~4 tiny caterpillars in the water.  Sigh.  

What a bummer.  But, live and learn; I'll do better next time.

SVB moth & cabbage moth seen

SVB was at noon, right on her daily schedule... Saw her fluttering around the tulled zucchinis, unable to enter.  Wasn't able to catch.

Have been seeing cabbage moths too, will mention it in the blog every few weeks or so.

Cabbage moth seen

I was wondering if at some point I could remove the tulle from the broccoli.  Answer:  No, well, at least not yet!  Moth seen fluttering around today, including when I stepped back out into the yard with the tulle raised up from doing a harvest.  I don't think she was in there but it's possible!!

Cabbage moth caterpillars (FOY) on un-covered kale and broccoli

Teency weency caterpillars on the underside of one of the uncovered kale leaves I harvested today.

And found one big chunky caterpillar on the underside of one of the uncovered broccolis.  Cut off the leaf and relocated.

Reference: Cabbage worms and egg photo

https://homesteadandchill.com/get-rid-of-cabbage-worms/

Cabbage butterfly possible sighting

Distant glimpse of a white butterfly leaving the yard at lunchtime today.  Glad the main broccoli patch is under cover!

Broccoli harvest ongoing!

Fun, getting a nice little decent harvest of broccoli given all the struggles in the early days with the seedlings doing terribly while inside. 

A lot of side shoots come up after the main head.  They're definitely smaller, but the volume adds up to nice amounts.

DELICIOUS raw in the Green Goddess salad dressing!!

Haven't seen any more cabbage moth worms since the first ones a couple of weeks ago.  Inspecting harvests very closely before eating.

Cabbage moth worms on broccoli leaves (back-filled post)

(16 July 2020:  Apparently I forgot to blog this at the time.  I think it was around July 2nd or so.)

Found several cabbage moth worms on the broccoli leaves.  I looked where there were holes and/or chewed edges, and found them on the underside of the leaves.  They seemed to be only on the fairly large/mature leaves rather than the small new leaves.

Found some eggs as well, very small but easy to see on the underside of the leaves.

Haven't seen any on the actual flowers or edible parts of the stalks.

Some are very small, others a bit bigger.  Didn't see any huge ones.