cabbage white butterfly

susan.wain

Hi gardeners world I was wondering if there is any way to prevent cabbage whites from laying their eggs on my broccoli plants: ie planting some other plant near to the broccoli

Dovefromabove

I'm afraid not ... they'll head for the broccoli ... you can either net them with fine insect netting, making sure it's well above the plants eventual height so the butterflies can't sit on the netting and lay their eggs through it, or you can do what I'm doing and inspect both sides of each broccoli leaf every day hunting down eggs/caterpillars and squidging them. 

AnniD

My friend uses netting, however when l was there recently, at least 3 cabbage whites were merrily flying around inside it. Some interesting language learned that day ! 

Dovefromabove

They will get in the tiniest  gap  ... when I net it takes me most of the day to make it impregnable ... to me as well as to the butterflies 

Singing Gardener

Some of the netting which is sold as butterfly netting has a mesh that the butterflies can squeeze through. I learnt this the hard way!

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