Can I Eat the Outer Green Leaves of Cabbage
three Mutual Kale Pests and How to Manage Them
Growing kale is 1 of the pleasures of spring vegetable gardening. The sturdy seedlings survive sudden cold spells when given modest protection, and so you lot can get an early start and start harvesting nutritious leaves by the time information technology's warm enough to transplant tomatoes. Stately kale plants are pretty, too, and then they are a great vegetable to mix with pansies, calendulas or other absurd-flavor flowers as shown in this Garden Planner planting program for spring kale.
But fifty-fifty easy-to-grow kale has its fair share of insect pests, and considering they are so small and furtive, kale pests accept special talents for launching sneak attacks. Here I will hash out the 3 most common kale pests in seasonal society, with links to more information at The Big Bug Chase, where you can report your sightings.
Cabbage Aphids
In my climate, fall-grown kale ofttimes survives winter and starts growing offset matter in spring. Wooly, gray-green cabbage aphids also survive hidden away in tiny crevices. As the plants grow, the cabbage aphids rapidly reproduce in dense colonies, similar the ane shown higher up.
Cabbage aphids feed by piercing leaf tissues and sucking out the juices, so a desperately colonized kale leaf will never recover and should be pinched off and promptly composted. You can treat small colonies of cabbage aphids with insecticidal soap, but it'south hard to kill every final aphid. Happily, vigorous young plants seem to be of footling interest to this kale pest, then you can take out sometime infested plants and get a new start with your jump ingather.
Cabbage Worms
Cabbage worms begin appearing in late leap, after you see white butterflies flitting most in your garden. In addition to mating, they are laying eggs on every kale, cabbage, and broccoli establish they can find. This educational video tracks the cabbage worm life cycle from egg to butterfly – a drama every vegetable gardener should understand. In Europe, a similar and even more voracious cabbage worm species, larvae of the large white butterfly, can go out kale plants badly damaged.
Many of the cabbage worms' natural enemies, especially wasps, are not all the same nowadays in big numbers in spring, so y'all must protect your plants past mitt-picking your cabbage worms, using row cover barriers to prevent egg laying, or using an organic pesticide that uses Bacillus thuringiensis or spinosad as its active ingredient. In very bad cabbage worm years I may do all three – mitt pick every worm I can detect, treat the plants with Bt, and then encompass them with lightweight tulle to preclude futurity egg-laying.
Harlequin Bugs
In Due north America, harlequin bugs expect until the weather warms in summertime to appear on kale plants, and there is no mistaking them because they are and then colorful. In my garden, spring-grown kale plants have passed their prime when the harlequin bugs appear, so I take out the plants and compost them rather than fight the bugs. Having the garden get a brassica-free zone for a few weeks in summer deprives all kale pests of the host plants they need, and sets the stage for fewer insects on the fall ingather.
In some areas of California and Arizona, the bagrada bug, or African painted bug, has joined the list of serious kale pests. The same pest management approaches that work with harlequin bugs should help with smaller, calico-colored bagrada bugs, and you may be able to use sweet alyssum as function of your defence force. Sugariness alyssum is such a strong attractant that the crushed foliage can be used in bagrada bug traps.
With all kale pests, early intervention volition make the firsthand claiming easier to handle, and oft results in fewer pest problems all flavour long. One of the groovy things about growing kale is that every season comes with a 2d risk. After your spring kale become history, you can set out vigorous young seedlings that volition mature in autumn'southward cooler weather.
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Source: https://www.growveg.com/guides/3-common-kale-pests-and-how-to-manage-them/
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