A Home For Moths

Gardener:Old Mangakino Orchard (McCallum's Garden)

Date:23 Sep 2023

Blog Type:Vegetables

Managed to get the brassicas planted today. Got some cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage.  All the delicious food for white butterflies!

This year, I'm trialing growing these crops under insect mesh as I suspect we may have tropical or fall army worm to deal with this year. Not something I'm particularly happy about but we play the hand we are dealt.  

I titled this home for moths as I tried this one year and a butterfly got in and what I ended up doing was creating a nice predator free moth breeding ground. So this year, I'm taking a two prong approach. Every so often, they will get a spray with Yates Success Ultra. It's derived from soil bacteria and deals to most chewing insects. 

I try to limit spraying in the garden and my philosophy is to let nature do it's thing with a little help from time to time. This is one of those little help situations.  

Another cool thing I found this week was a local guy who sells gardening supplies on Facebook.  I've been looking for a place to get netting and other garden accessories without having to pay postage. He has these cool pegs that clip to string for holding tomatoes and cucumber etc. I'm using a lot of hop twine this year for growing stuff up so these are awsome. Bought 5000m of twine so I think I'm sorted for life.

The only downside today is that we potentially have torrential rain on the way. Hopefully the netting helps.  I like to plant when rain is due but not normally heavy rain!

 

A Home For Moths