Moth Alert - watch your cabbages
Just spotted this on the BBC site
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36516619
Deluge of moths and slugs, never ending rain..
If ever there was a case for Brexit
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
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Beat you to it Pete!
I live in Belgium and eat loads of organic broccoli, cabbage and cauli grown in Belgium mostly as well as growing my own and PSB.
Never heard of these moths devastating crops or had any in my garden.
Big brassica growers and eaters on the continent, not to mention all that sugar beet, so I assume the locals know what to do about them and, if not, you'll need EU scientists working together to find a solution if they do invade and are indeed resistant to most pesticides.
Last edited: 14 June 2016 16:13:04
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
Last week I noticed crowds of moths that I thought were infesting my strawberries, only to realise that they were even more numerous on the adjoining row of rocket (which is a brassica). Another member suggested that they might be this pest, and now it seems likely that they are. They had just spilled over into the strawberries, and other crops too, in their hundreds.
They are not so noticeable now, but I won't be surprised if I find the rocket munched to shreds soon. I don't bother with other brassicas - they just have too many pests!
hmm possibly not the year to try growing rocket. Think I have spottd a few of these around already.
I read the BBC headline this evening 'Biblical' moth influx threatens to devastate crops. Then I noticed the little video of the diamondback moths and realised it was the 'thing' I'd been trying to photograph all over my Bowles Mauve wall flower a couple of days ago. There were only about a dozen but they were very lively just after the rain. A devil try and photograph with my shaky hands and them being so small - but had no idea they were causing so much trouble coming over to the UK in such numbers this last week. Depressing problem from commercial growers and farmers if they don't identify something to deal with the influx - bearing in the mind the other side of the coin of government prevaricating on pesticides which may be devastating bee colonies. The world environment seems to be changing - whether it's global warming, increased trade in goods which can commute unwanted wildlife and not as much vigilance in human habits in a busy world where the grasp for profit overrides careful consideration of everything in the round.
Good phot, yarrow2. That looks a lot like the moths I've seen - smaller and narrower than a clothes moth.
Anyone had their crops devastated by these moths? I saw a couple of them in June but have protected all of my brassicas apart from swede and kohl rabi with frames covered with scaffold netting and haven't had any devastation from caterpillars at all.