The best way to treat cabbage for pest control
How to treat cabbage from pests when they appear, as well as to prevent a problem, there are many means and methods. The beneficial properties and taste of the vegetable attracts many insects and other pests.
Their invasion can be sudden, changing the color and surface of cabbage leaves. To preserve the harvest, you need to take measures.
Most frequent unwanted guests
Prevention, folk remedies or purchased insecticides can act as measures to combat cabbage pests.
What pests are most often found on cabbage? Sometimes vegetable growers find out that pests have settled very late, since they are inside the head of cabbage or under the leaves. The most common cabbage pests and how to deal with them.
The vegetable crop is often attacked by slugs. They especially like young seedlings. Harmful activity is actively deployed in rainy, cloudy weather or with excessive watering. They spread at great speed. If one slug was seen in the morning, then by evening there will be a large number of them. What to do in this case? A solution based on bitter pepper copes very well with them.
Another popular pest is the bear (cabbage). The size of the insect can reach 6 cm in length. The color is brownish-brown, the abdomen is yellowish. Lives mainly underground and eats the roots or stems of the plant. The fight against them is long and difficult. Watering the soil with a 0.3% chlorophos solution will help.
A small aphid insect can destroy the entire crop. They are especially active in June. Females that have wings lay numerous eggs. They themselves feed on vegetable juice. How to spray cabbage when attacked by aphids? You can spray the top with purchased insecticides, for example, Fitoverm, Aktara.
You can often find the cabbage moth. The color of the wings is woody with wavy stripes. She lays down caterpillars that eat leaves. As a result, it can lead to the death of a vegetable crop.
If cabbage pests are found and methods of dealing with them should be effective. Organophosphates will help to get rid of cabbage moths. You can make bait for bees that feed on caterpillars. Jam or ordinary sugar is useful, on the basis of which syrup is made, and the beds are watered.
The cabbage fly is slightly smaller than the common fly. She lays eggs near the bottom of the stem of the seedlings. And after two weeks, the white worms hatched from the larvae begin to eat the cabbage roots and the lower part of the stem. As a result, the cabbage withers and dies. In time, the problem can be detected by the bottom sheets that change color. If worms were found on the roots, they must be collected.
How to deal with an insect? Spraying with bay leaf broth can help with cabbage fly. Lavrushka is poured with boiling water, insisted, and then vegetables are sprayed. You can pollinate the beds with dust, water with chlorophos solution. You can pour wood ash with water in the evening, and in the early morning spray each leaf with the resulting solution.
The cabbage whitetail is known to us as a small butterfly, which has white wings with black spots. During the day, she can lay up to 100 eggs on cabbage leaves. After 1.5 weeks, yellow-green caterpillars appear that can eat the crop. You can save the crop with calcium arsenate or spray with chlorophos.
The wireworm (dark nutcracker) is well known to gardeners. A small beetle, about 1.5 cm long, can have a different color depending on the species. Mostly black-brown color is found. An adult does not pose a danger to cultivated plants, but the larvae can destroy the entire crop.
The wireworm is a thin worm, light in color. The worms can be up to 3.5 cm long. The wireworm in the cabbage eats the central stem, which leads to rotting of the vegetable.
The wireworm is afraid of wood ash, lime dressing. Preventive measures are the obligatory weeding of the beds, loosening the soil around the cabbage and the introduction of potash and ammonia fertilizers.
It is effective to make bait for the beetle so that the wireworm does not damage the stems later. For this purpose, small heaps of hay or grass are laid out between the rows. As soon as the beetles get there, they are collected and destroyed.
Not only the appearance of the plant can change from pests, but also in case of diseases. Treatment in this case should be different. Therefore, you need to distinguish between the symptoms so that the cultivation of the crop is without problems.
Natural products
As a preventive measure, it is better to use natural ingredients. How to protect cabbage from pests, you can try products based on natural ingredients. Processing cabbage from pests can be carried out using folk recipes.
- Infusion of chicken manure will not only scare off pests, but also enrich the soil with nutrients. In a bucket of water, you should dilute the bird droppings, leave to infuse for a day, and then pour under the root.
- Onion peel tincture helps with cabbage pests. It is necessary to prepare 500 g of husk and pour 4 liters of hot water. Leave to infuse for three days. It is useful to add shavings of tar soap to the resulting solution. To cultivate the soil, it is recommended every four days.
- An infusion based on potato tops will protect you from caterpillars and slugs. Approximately 1 kg of tops will be useful, which is dried and poured with a bucket of water, about knocking. It is recommended to dissolve soap shavings in the prepared solution.
- Insects, especially white wormwood, do not like the smell of wormwood. You can pour chopped greens with water and leave for two days. Then the infusion is boiled for an hour and filtered. Before watering, dilute with water in a 1: 2 ratio. Effectively, it is just as easy to spread wormwood twigs between the rows.
- You can treat the cabbage with an ash solution. It will help repel many pests. Dissolve 400 g of ash in a bucket of water and leave to infuse for 10 hours. Be sure to process the leaves on both sides for several days in a row.
- Orange peel will help in the fight against pests. The peel of one fruit is poured with a liter of water and left to infuse for a week. Laundry soap shavings are added to the finished solution.
It happens that a dacha is attacked by a hare. In order not to harm the animal and save the harvest in the country, you can use the following measures:
- from hares around the plant, you can sprinkle sulfur, red pepper or water the soil with a solution of onion peel;
- along the perimeter of the site, you can plant plants, the smell of which is unpleasant for the hare: peonies, azalea, geranium, marigold, parsley, wormwood;
- it is recommended to strengthen the fence against hares, for example, a chain-link mesh helps;
- helps to tie around the place where cabbage grows, ordinary bags, the rustle of which animals are afraid of.
Non-standard methods of struggle include the use of hats. They will help to cope with the problem of cabbage caps. Thanks to the cap, the worms that appear from the clutches of insects will not be able to harm the vegetable. Caps are made of breathable material, with a diameter of about 25 cm. During the summer of butterflies, one cap is straightened and put on a head of cabbage.
Ready-made chemical solutions
As soon as the vegetables begin to darken, vegetable growers start looking for ways to get rid of cabbage pests. You can buy ready-made preparations for cabbage pest control. The following drugs are considered the most popular and effective.
How to treat a plant when pests are detected? In agriculture, Aktara insecticide is widely used to kill insects. They can spray not only an already planted crop or water the soil, but also process the seeds before planting. The drug begins to act quickly and retains its protective properties for two months.
Cabbage seedlings should be watered with a solution of 3 g of the drug, diluted in 10 liters of water. For transplanted vegetables, the consumption rate will be 1.4 g (one bag).
If pests of cabbage and the fight against them can be carried out with an effective drug Intavir. Available in powder and tablet form. To process cabbage, you need to dissolve 1.5 tablets in 10 liters of water. Spray the plant with Intavir in the morning or in the evening, touching each area on the leaf. You should not use the drug more than three times per season.
Fitoverm can destroy all pests in two hours. The drug is produced in the form of a liquid concentrate, which must be diluted with water. Fitoverm helps to cope with cabbage whites and moths. Instructions for use assume the following dilution: Dissolve 4 ml of the drug in a liter of water. Cannot be mixed with other drugs.
How to use the drug correctly? Spraying Fitoverm should be done in the morning or in the evening in dry, calm weather. The product is harmless to nature. The protective properties after application continue to operate for another 2 weeks.
When using Fitoverm, you should follow safety measures. Spraying should be carried out in special clothing; you must not smoke or eat near the work field. After treatment, the exposed areas of the body are washed with soap.
What else can you spray cabbage with from pests? Senpai will help get rid of a large number of pests. It is produced in the form of a liquid solution. Senpai begins to act within 30 minutes after spraying not only on adults, but also on their larvae and eggs. Protects further for two weeks. After processing the site with Senpai, it is not recommended to go to work with the land for another week.
For cabbage, dilute Senpai's solution at the rate of 5 ml per 10 liters of water. The solution cannot be stored, therefore it must be diluted immediately before work. You need to spray no more than once a month. Works are carried out in the early morning hours or after sunset. There should be no wind and rain.
If the drug Senpai does not pose a high danger to humans, then it is very dangerous for bees. For several days, the distance between the treated area and the summer bees should be at least 4 km.
Gardening experience
Experienced vegetable growers have repeatedly encountered pests on their site. Therefore, like no one else can suggest useful tips and leave feedback.
Olga, 42 years old.
The first time I was frightened by a meeting with worms that settled on the roots of cabbage. The pest ate up not only the roots, but also the stem. The plant began to wither, darken and had to be dug up. Each white worm on the root is no more than 1 cm. I had to remove all vegetables similar to this one at once. She sprinkled the remaining plants with ash and loosened the ground. Now I do a similar procedure when planting crops. I advise everyone to save the harvest!
Ivan, 54 years old
I cover the cabbage beds with wormwood, sprinkle pepper or tobacco. The pest does not fly up to the cabbage bush protected in this way. Immediately sprinkle the eaten foliage with wood ash or water the soil with an infusion of onion peels. All these methods help at all stages of plant growth.
Maria, 51 years old
When sowing cabbage, I always apply potash fertilizers and sprinkle the soil with ash. We also protect vegetables with infusion of herbs, poultry droppings. In this way, the root system is nourished and protected from insects. In the event of a massive invasion of insects, such proven remedies as Aktara, Fitoverm are good.
In the fight against the cabbage pest, I use this tool, it effectively helps. But at the same time I feed her with BioGrow, which is a bioactivator of plant growth. It helps to better cope with all negative factors, cabbage grows better, does not die at an early stage of growth. I bought it in this store.