Sharing the harvest? Kale and Cabbage Moths

Greens week has been a huge success and I owe it mostly to my garden!  It has been pumping out the leafy veggies prolifically!  However, that abundant production has not gone unnoticed in my local ecological community.

Cabbage moths have happily found themselves a nice place to lay their eggs—the kale, which is technically a type of cabbage .  From those eggs emerge very hungry caterpillars who happily gorge themselves on the kale!  But I want to happily gorge my self on the kale!

Now, some people might think “well, there’s enough for all of us, I’ll let the little guys stay.”  Sadly that rarely ends well.  As they grow they eat more and more, leaving skeletonized leaves and poop, followed by exponential amounts of offspring who return to do the same!  The same goes for other bugs, like the squash vine borers I was dealing with last summer…

Luckily it’s easy to either remove them and put them far from your plants, or just squish them, or throw ’em in a pail of soapy water.  And then you can keep on eating all the delicious leafy goodness!  Next week I will reflect on my week of greens and list all the ways I ate them.

(Above) Look closely to find signs of who has been here… little poops.

(Above) Look really close for a tiny egg.