Caterpillar attack

[dave45]

feeling quite pleased with myself for successfully arranging an automatic greenhouse watering system (hozelock battery-operated widget) i went on holiday for 2 weeks

returned to find devastation in the greenhouse - caterpillars had stripped about 75% of all my pepper plant leaves and fruit and were starting on the tomatoes... they seem to avoid the cucumbers! B***rds! I have picked off the ugly fat things (about 50 I'd guess) and fed them to the chooks.

But if I hadn't gone on holiday, what else could i have done to stop the attack?

The watering was successful at least.

btw caterpillars leave droppings that look like mouse cr*p

[Peggy Sue]

I agree, it's hard enough when you are actually there. I netted all my brassicas bar a few odd ones this year and they STILL got in and wreaked havoc. So we eventually took the nets off so we could at least do a regular squidge session.

It's not a matter of picking off one or two though, really there are dozens per plant. I really don't remember it being dozens per PATCH 2 years ago (rabbits got the lot last year so no comparision there).

Brassicas do seem to regrow, all bar calabrese & cauli that seem to be very poor to recover. I guess peppers are way too tender to come back? I didn't realise caterpillars liked tomatoes.... I shall have to beware.

We were thinking of making a net frame for the doorway so we can open the greenhouse door for ventilation without letting the butterflies in, but it will have to be smaller than butterfly netting as that doesn't work

[JoanneRoach]

You have my sympathy.
We had the same problem and netted the door and across the window. Not that easy to do and fiddly to move but it worked pretty well. Didn't stop the aphids which was then our new problem! But did stop the butterflies laying.
The eggs take 3-4 days to hatch so if it's a long weekend, a quick check and the thumb squishing routine on any existing eggs before you go will see you through, but beyond that it's just very annoying.
This year we have builders in and have little stints of a few days at a time when we can't get to certain parts of the garden and this is what happened to my red cabbage in five days last week.
ARGH!!

[dave45]

some more observations:

dark green/black caterpillar crap on a leaf is a sign that there is an evil caterpillar above
they are very well disguised, and tend to be invisible from above... evolutionary influences I guess.
tomato leaves get chomped a little but not as much as pepper leaves.. they will use tomato plants as walkways from A to B
they don't eat cucumber leaves (too hairy?)
they eat and strip vine-leaves too
found one today in a dead/brown cucumber leaf
given time I think the pepper plants may recover - new leaves are emerging
but they seem to be programmed to make their way to the top of plants to get at the new shoots
they chomp a hole in the green pepper fruits then go inside... the insides subsequently go black and manky and rot on the plant - horrid. Sometimes u can find live caterpillars inside a pepper.. also horrid.
unless they at different stages, I think there were 2 or 3 different types of caterpillar.

I have a different view of butterflies since this episode

[Millymollymandy]

Yuk, so sorry to hear all that (and at your peppers!). But don't go off all butterflies! There are the two different kind of cabbage white which are the nasties on brassicas (in that photo posted) and there's at least two others I've found on my brassicas that I can't work out what they are from - I think they might be some kind of moth as I looked through all my butterfly books. No idea what kind like to eat peppers though. What did the caterpillars look like?

[Peggy Sue]

I spent a full hour caterpillar sqidging this weekend on the allotment- I'm not at all squeemish but some of those b*ggers were huge
It was alot like that caterpillar buffet pic!

Popped back down in the afternoon for veg for tea and MORE had emerged- the advantage of a bit of sunshine, you could see their shaddow through the leave

[dave45]

if you google-image for "cabbage white caterpillar" - most of them looked like the two-tone green version of the large white but they weren't hairy. Or my eyesight is too poor to see. There were some brownish ones too.

The chickens seem to like them though

[Millymollymandy]

My chooks won't touch the yellow black hairy ones and aren't even really keen on the smooth plain green ones. So I just squidge them - anyone else found that they smell vile?

I never had any caterpillar problems on my brassicas until last year and this year, wonder why?

[Peggy Sue]

My chooks won't touch the yellow black hairy ones and aren't even really keen on the smooth plain green ones. So I just squidge them - anyone else found that they smell vile?

Funnily enough my friend (sadly lives a bit far away for her eggs )has the same reaction with the yellow & black ones and her chooks, she reckons they can't see them

The smell starts to get to me when I've squidged over 50 or so and my hands are covered Did try t see if my dog liked eating them, but sadly no (that would have cut down the dog food bill)

[dave45]

I have 5 hens, and only two of them will eat the caterpillars - White Star and Black Rock. The others peck once and leave them. Strange.

I have no brassicas planted this year... in the greenhouse are vines, peppers, tomatoes, cucumber and a peach tree. So the Cabbage/Large white isn't that particular about where she lays her eggs ! Just noticed that the peach tree leaves have been munched too :-(

[Millymollymandy]

Maybe the trick for next time you go away is to plant a few brassicas in the hope that the butterflies will lay their eggs on them instead and they can munch them before attacking the 'important' crops? Even just raise a few cabbagy things in pots that you can put in the greenhouse when you are away?