Protecting Cabbages from butterflies

baza

Hello Everyone 
Last year my cabbages were ravaged by butterflies so this year I'm after your tips and how stop this happening again . Don't really want to use nets as I don't like the look of it . So any tips would come in great 
Thanks

Baz

Dovefromabove

Last year I kept inspecting the underside of the brassica leaves daily and wiping off any butterfly eggs and we never had any caterpillar damage ... but I only had four broccoli plants. When we had more I netted them ... appearance be blowed ... have to be practical. 

barry island

I will be using the inspect and squash technique this year, last year I used insect netting which works apart from being difficult to get under the netting which became infested with whitefly.

floralies

My OH made me a wooden frame and stapled the netting on to it. You could then lift the frame off when you needed to. This was fine for the raised bed, but I guess it depends what area you want to cover. It worked very well until NN's cat sat on it and broke it!

Hampshire_Hog

The only effective way if you trying to protect a large number of plants is netting, a few people at our allotments have invested in walk in fruit cage and covered that in suitable net but I will use a mixture of fleece, net and vigilance always worked OK for me .

Pete.8

I used vegetable cages for my broccoli last year, but if a leaf touches the netting chances are a cabbage white will spot it and lay eggs.
I thought I had stunning heads of broccoli last year, but when I cut them, the heads were crawling with caterpillars - not just a few but masses of them - the whole lot went on the compost.  I doubt I'll try growing brassicas again.

baza

Thanks everyone it's looking like vigilance is the way for me this year
Thanks
Baz

Lyn

I made a frame and made a walk in cage, I bought a roll of scaffolding netting, very close weave, she couldn’t get through that.