Butterflies are beautiful but at an earlier stage of their lives, as caterpillars, they're quite harmful to our gardens and vegetable patches. Only slugs will consistently do more damage as they chew through leafy vegetables and a variety of other plants, such as broccoli, tomatoes, turnips, sprouts and swedes.
In a single morning, a few caterpillars can dig into the middle of a plant, destroying them beyond repair, leading to whole sections of otherwise useful vegetables being relegated to the compost heap.
Larvae of the cabbage white butterfly loves lettuce and cabbage, and related plants, and they are at their worst from late spring all through to September, so that's when we need to keep an eye out and protect our crops.
You can tell when you've been visited by caterpillars because the leaves of your plants will look like skeletons, all the fleshy green parts having been consumed, leaving only the veins. Also, they can be easily seen since they are active during the daytime. Butterfly eggs are usually laid underneath the leaves, in clumps of a few dozen, and are white or yellowish.
There are a number of options for dealing with caterpillars, firstly is to prevent them from ever showing up in the first place by keeping the butterflies off with garden netting. You can also try to attract hedgehogs, birds and other insect-eaters to your garden to help keep the numbers down.
If that doesn't work, a splash of sour milk will kill the eggs before they hatch, or if you notice caterpillars are already active, a quick dusting of flour on wet leaves will create a slippery surface and they won't be able to climb up and feed.
Another possibility is to grow plants like sage, thyme and mint near to your vegetables, since butterflies don't like the scent of them and will stay away.
Enjoy your garden!
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