How can you treat Peking cabbage from pests to combat them

Peking cabbage pests and the fight against them are increasingly becoming the cause of discussion, since the culture is rapidly gaining popularity, and there is much less information about it in the sources than about the cauliflower or white-headed fellow.

The yield of Peking cabbage, subject to the optimum soil moisture, is very high, but all the efforts put into growing cabbage are reduced to zero if the gardener ignored the precautions against harmful insects. How to protect the future harvest from the invasion of voracious caterpillars, and how to get rid of pests if they are already seen on cabbage inflorescences?

Garden pest control methods

Agricultural technology will not name a single technique that would definitely help rid the garden of all types of pests within a single application, and even with a future perspective. Some methods will be effective on gnawing insects - these include: cabbage scoop, cabbage whiteworm, cruciferous flea, long-legged mosquitoes and others.

With the help of other methods, we get rid of sucking pests - these are: aphids, thrips and cruciferous bugs. A special group is made up of naked slugs, which can spoil the entire future harvest of Peking cabbage in a season.

The only general rule that can be applied to all types of pests in the garden is the observance of the timeliness of the event, that is, the use of funds at a time when insects are most vulnerable in terms of development stages. In order to properly comply with this condition, it is necessary to combine the identified pests according to the cyclical nature of their growth, the transition from one state of development to another.

This will help in choosing a universal substance that affects several groups of pests at once, because they never visit the garden alone.

In total, according to the methods of protecting Peking cabbage from pests, there are three areas, each of which has its own risks and its own limits of impact:

• The method of chemical treatment against Peking cabbage pests is considered the most effective and urgent, which is why it is used, most often, in conditions of large field work, or in the presence of a large vegetable garden with "for sale" plantings. Chemical treatment of Chinese cabbage against pests, due to its aggressiveness, can negatively affect the beneficial qualities of a vegetable crop and even give cabbage an unpleasant taste. However, this method is the only one that helps to protect the heads of cabbage from losing their presentation and yellowing, in the shortest possible time, when there are too many pests that have reached the peak of gluttony;
• The biological method protects Chinese cabbage only if the required conditions are regularly maintained, since it does not act on the destruction of pests, but on their rejection. The method is considered the safest, but it is not used as an independent solution for the treatment of culture - only as a prevention. Also, slugs will show complete indifference to biological methods;
• Folk, "home" methods using decoctions and solutions prepared without the use of chemicals really help from pests on Peking cabbage, but, as a rule, not for long, but before the first good watering or rain. With the help of "grandmother's" recipes, cabbage can be quickly restored from a disease provoked by the activity of insects, but if organic ingredients or poisonous herbs, such as aconite or hemlock, are used improperly, vegetables, and subsequently the people who used them, may suffer.

Preventive measures against garden pests

Pests on Peking cabbage may turn out to be not guests, but quite legitimate owners - if the owner of the garden, before cultivating the soil for planting cabbage, did not carry out special soil treatment "in winter", which implies cleaning the area from weeds, old mulch, garbage, and deep digging.

If this is not done immediately after harvesting the previous harvest, then the larvae of the pests remain to winter in the ground, and in the spring they calmly move to the seedlings of Peking cabbage.

What to do to avoid such a situation if the time for the autumn soil preparation was missed or if the autumn prevention against pests on cabbage was ineffective?

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A week or two before the planned planting of Peking cabbage seedlings, you need to weed out the weeds, and in return, sow plants around the perimeter of the site that work to attract insects that are indifferent to cabbage, but willingly eat pests. As a rule, these are strong-smelling umbrella or onions, tomatoes, marigolds.

Sweet "baits" are also suitable in the form of rags soaked in sugar syrup, dug shallow underground between the rows of Chinese cabbage. Why is this being done? This feeding will be appreciated by wasps, destroying cabbage caterpillars scoops, and garden black ants, which do not leave in their path the larvae of all pests, without exception, localized at the roots of cabbage.

Nursing insects can not only be attracted, but also purchased in specialized stores. Attention should be paid to the following types of beneficial garden insects that do not pose a danger to garden crops:

• phytoseiids (mites);
• neoseiulus;
• orius;
• anthocoris.

To combat slugs and aphids, encourage the presence of ladybirds, lacewings, and hoverflies on Chinese cabbage and near plantings. Below we list the main garden pests that cause death or severe cabbage diseases.

Cruciferous fleas

The best protection against a cruciferous flea is the prevention of its appearance, since it is very difficult to get rid of colonies of this small insect, no more than 3 mm in size. Since the pest hibernates in the outer layers of the soil, its appearance can be prevented even during the period of autumn digging and garbage collection - the removal of rotten foliage and mown weeds from the territory.

If the seeds were properly treated before planting, the probability of hitting them with a flea is lower, but only if the soil was also treated with an etching - otherwise, cabbage seedlings will be defenseless against the pest.

From biological methods, in a period when the pest has not yet settled on the plantings of cabbage in bulk, but some of its units have already been noticed, you can try planting plants with a strong specific smell. Onions and garlic help well, the aroma of which pests cannot stand.

It is not difficult to understand that the flea has already carried out the first attacks on the garden. It is necessary to examine the cotyledon leaves of a young planting at the time of their integrity. Small holes, as if left by shot and quickly drying out around the circumference - this is the main sign of the presence of this pest. The hole can also be seen on the leaf of the emerging head of cabbage, however, a mature plant does not so easily lose juice and an adult cabbage can still be saved by taking urgent measures.

From the folk methods, experienced gardeners, first of all, use spraying with garlic infusion or solutions prepared using wood ash. Ash can also be used dry, sprinkling it between rows. In the same way, tobacco dust and lime (slaked) are used.

If home methods from a pest do not help, urgently rid cabbage of fleas, a mixture of the following components will help:

• hexachlorane 12%;
• insecticide DDT.

The ingredients are mixed in equal proportions, and spraying of Beijing cabbage occurs according to the scheme - 15 g of substance per 10 sq. meters of the plot. In total, 3-4 treatments are carried out per season using this method with a week's pause.

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Aphid

The pest belongs to the sucking type and rarely exceeds 2 mm in size. Aphids are one of the main provocateurs of culture death, contributing to the disease of Peking cabbage. It is easy to find out the work of the pest - firstly, the insect, crowding into a continuous live crust, will always be present right there, on the head of cabbage; secondly, the plant itself will quickly lose its vitality - it will wither, become covered with brownish ulcers.

Often, on cabbage from the activity of aphids, the leaves completely turn yellow.

From biological methods, insects-orderlies are effectively used against aphids, such as: aphidius wasps and ladybirds. Around the garden and even between the rows, you can sparsely plant carrots or dill, releasing them "into the seed."

The methods of folk struggle begin with the simplest methods, acting for the purpose of prevention - this is spraying Peking cabbage with onion or garlic infusions - and up to complex ones, using solutions.

A universal, "home" method against aphids is tobacco broth. Tobacco leaves (slightly less than 0.5 kg) are poured with two liters of water and kept on low heat for two hours. Then the cooled liquid is filtered, 50 g of soap shavings are diluted in it until the latter is completely dissolved and the cabbage is abundantly watered with this composition, so that the pests are literally washed off the plants.

Chemical treatment is used when it comes to saving cabbage from certain death. For these purposes, an aqueous 0.2% composition of anabazine-sulfate is prepared. This solution is taken 0.5 liters per 10 square meters of land.

Naked slugs

The presence of such a pest as slugs in the garden is almost impossible to detect at an early stage of their appearance, since these creatures are active exclusively at night. The first signs of their presence are expressed in sticky, shiny traces on the soil and cabbage heads, and a little later - in visible damage to the leaves.

If slugs are seen in other areas, but have not yet shown interest in Peking cabbage, you need to try to prevent them from landing by sprinkling a dry mixture of salt, mustard powder, red pepper and ash, taken in equal proportions, between the rows.

You need to wake up the composition twice, with a week's pause, however, if the slugs have already shown great activity and gluttony, it is better to purchase a ready-made mixture, especially from these pests, for example - "Thunderstorm". The drug does not affect any of the insect species, therefore, it can be used without fear of harming the beneficial fauna of the treated area.

You can also protect cabbage from slugs using folk methods, but it is useless to use them with a significant accumulation of pests.First of all, spraying with an aqueous vinegar solution (2 glasses of vinegar per 10 liters of water) and sprinkling the rows with tobacco dust or ash are used. If a simple option, how to deal with slugs, did not have an effect, prepare a complex composition of 2 teaspoons of salt, dry mustard and red pepper mixed in a liter of ash.

Several times during the season, sprinkle the mixture on the cabbage heads and the space between them.

There are many methods to rid the garden of unwanted guests, but the easy way, using chemical compounds, often leads to the fact that the vegetable becomes dangerous for consumption. Therefore, before treating Peking cabbage from pests with the help of chemistry, use 1-2 methods of the folk prescription piggy bank and, perhaps, it will be possible to save the crop without the use of dangerous reagents.