Cabbage Worms – Importance of Daily Garden Checks
I was told when I put in my garden to check it every single day for damaging insects and slugs. I enjoy my morning (and afternoon) visits to my garden so much that it was never a problem to follow through on that. But with these crazy rain storms we’ve been having here in Western North Carolina, I went more than 2 days without checking in on it.
What I found was my young dinosaur kale ravaged by cabbage worms. Cabbage worms are a moth larvae that love kale, which is a member of the same family as cabbage. They are almost the same exact color as young leafy greens so you have to really look to see them. I found more than a dozen happily eating away all of the new leaves, leaving only green stalks sticking up.
But all is not lost. I removed them. The next day I went back out and removed a dozen more. The third day there were only a couple, which is pretty normal.
New leaves are growing in and I will have beautiful kale soon enough. I will not neglect my garden again; come rain, hail, sleet, or snow.
My chard was also attacked, but by slugs. The chard is so large and strong already that the slugs didn’t do much damage. I removed them to what I call “slughaven”. I can’t help it – I’m sentimental about slugs for some reason. I can’t bear to cause them harm.
1 Comment Posted by Diana | Category: Gardening
Sentimental about slugs, eh? Not me. They appear on my back porch after rain. They’re fascinating but… Fresh kale sounds lovely.