sustainable garden

Oh, the irony.

There I am, blogging about the falling butterfly population, while on my brocolli the caterpillar count goes through the roof!

These are the familiar caterpillars of the large white or cabbage white butterfly.

If you're organic, the only option I know of is to go over every leaf of every plant and remove the caterpillars with your fingers.

That is not the most pleasant job. They smell awful. Then I drop the caterpillars into a jar filled with water to drown them.

Even after three thorough sweeps across the plants, new caterpillars were still emerging.

Not all gardening is nice.