The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

First of all, its been about a week since my last post, my apologies. Our computer had broken down and we just got back on line.

I’d like to report that the lettuce looks like it doing great as you can see here:

However, during the time we were off line, an enemy had invaded the garden. It was an aerial attack! Hundreds of small white butterflies were gracefully flitting about the garden. It was so lovely…

I knew what they were as soon as I saw them. They were the adults of the Cabbage Looper. One of those species of green caterpillars that chew holes in cabbage and other related plants such as broccoli or cauliflower.

I thought we were pretty much done with Cabbage loopers for the season. We still have some broccoli out but our main crop has already been cut and eaten, so I wasn’t worried very much about that. The cabbage is fully grown and will be harvested this week, so, no problem there either. The Brussels Sprouts didn’t seem to attract many butterflies, so I’ll just keep an eye out for any problems on them.

What I wasn’t ready for was the sneak attack on our lettuce!! Yes, the loopers are eating the lettuce. This group of worms seem to be even more voracious than the summer worms.

I found them on all the varieties of lettuce, but they seem to have a preference. The Romaine has the worst infestation followed by the Black Seeded Simpson leaf lettuce. The Butter Crunch has a few and the Iceberg has none that I can see.

Since the loopers are the same color as the lettuce leaf, they can be hard to find. There is no mistaking the frass (the scientific term for caterpillar poop) they leave behind. (by the way, I wonder if I can say p**p in a family oriented blog?) Look for the frass and you will find the problem maker.

They are easy to control with an application of Bt insecticide, or other garden bug killer.

Better check your lettuce if you haven’t done so since the weekend. The summer-like weather we recently had, really made those loopers grow. The bigger they get, the more they eat!

Bob