Topic: Baby Cabbage

[Roy Bham UK]

;D Is there anything I should be doing to protect my baby cabbage (April) as they are now 3 inches tall, only I would hate to lose any as they look quite healthy :-\ ;D

I also have teeny weeny seedlings of cauliflower, sprout and broccoli will they be able to survive unprotected? ???

[tim]

A devoted mother??

Net against pigeons, cabbage whites, cats & children.

Slugs? It's up to you what measures you take. Until they get a bit stronger, you could always put a piece of pop bottle over them to dissuade attack?

[moonbells]

Now's the time they're most vulnerable to attack: I'd recommend well-pegged fleece to stop flea beetle and pigeons.

As I know to my cost and have mentioned elsewhere, if the fleece blows off you can lose the lot in a night.  I've now got netting pegged over them with fleece over the top of that. If I lose the fleece again then the net will at least stop the pigeons.

I hope it does better than Muttley&co

moonbells

[westsussexlottie]

Watch out for those grey cabbage aphids - they are evil bugs which have destroyed some of my baby savoys... :'(

I have now sprayed them with derris.

[tim]

With young plants, surely it's safer, surer & cheaper to use finger & thumb. Or a soft brush?

[westsussexlottie]

I was amazed at how quickly the aphids infested an entire plant. I have never seen anything spread so fast.

One weekend I checked for aphids at the allotment and I hand squished a few on 1 plant and added a few ladybirds. By the following weekend they had infested 3 plants severely, and in particular the hearting middle leaves, the outer leaves were bleached and I had lost 1 plant with 2 others not looking good at all, - so I removed the one ineffective ladybird -  the derris was precautionary to kill off the breeding colony.

So beware - don't leave it even a day to remove these grey nasties.

[RSJK]

I have to agree with what Tim says about using your finger and thumb on young plants, as with most of the sprays for pests these days you can only use two applications.
                              ;)

[Marianne]

I believe the best protection is the plastic bottle/cloche thingy.  However watch out for the hard sun that will make it unbearingly hot under there !  :-[
Good luck!

[busy_lizzie]

We started ours off in large plastic bottles and now have removed those and got netting around.  Use your Wilkinsons cloche tubes Roy which are great and just spread a fine netting over them instead of the polythene.  :) busy_lizzie

[aquilegia]

I have my young sprout plants under bottle cloches. The one that tipped off got totally devoured by a snail (which is now trapped under the cloche until it starves. mwhaha!) I'm hoping by the time it outgrows the bottle, it'll be big enough and ugly enough to not be palletteable to snails anymore.

[Roy Bham UK]

 ;) Thanks for the tips Guys ;) I found an old discarded fishermans/womans keep net (recyle!) that I can convert into a net clotch ;) the things we have to do to beat these pesky pests ::) ;D