My vegetable garden is small this year, so the stuff I have in it gets much more attention and has more importance to me.When I have a vegetable garden that includes cabbage, the plants have to be covered in the summer with agricultural fleece before the Cabbage White butterflies discover the garden. The caterpillars of this butterfly once they hatch will reduce my cabbages and any member of the mustard plant group to skeletons in a few short days. A physical barrier is the best way to keep them off. I won't spray the vegetables with chemicals. I feel it defeats the point of growing your own vegetables. 
I haven't seen the dreaded white butterfly just yet. They really don't fly until July. They will show up while we're away so today I have covered the lot.
This is the purple sprouting broccoli. It's lookin good!
These are the cabbages - starting to form their centres.
Warning to all slugs: I will kill you if you sneak under the fleece and try to eat these cabbages.
This is the cabbages and broccoli now safe from the butterflies under a gentle cloud of agricultural fleece. Aren't the sweet peas to the right of the fleece looking vigorous? The flower buds are already forming. Garden peas to the left of the fleece are looking a bit anaemic. Let's hope they perk up.
3 comments:
Now I know for sure my sweet peas are struggling - yours have come on so much since the last photo and mine have barely moved. And still no flowers in sight.
The soil must be too heavy. I obviously didn't improve it enough!
I don't know about that Bird Woman, I did NOTHING to the soil to improve it before planting them out. Did you sew directly or plant out plants? I planted out plants.
I sowed them directly - sometime in April, I think. Maybe even March.
Just in case, I dug around them yesterday and addeed some compost and fertilizer. I've tried to break up the soil a bit (had to get birdman to do it as I couldn't get the fork in very far!!).
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