Wierd Green 'larvae' on my soil

[Vicy]

Hi all,


My swede leaves have been obliterated and there's loads of tiny green balls on the soil surface, any ideas????

 

[Chuck]

Cabbage looper damage. Most times a caterpillars poop (frass) is dark green or black but not always.

 

[Vicy]

Is there anything I can do about it?

 

[Chuck]

Is there anything I can do about it?

If there are any more caterpillars kill them but otherwise there isn't much you can do as the damage is done. It may not be loopers but some other worm that lives in the soil and comes out at night. It wouldn't hurt anything to spray with Bt or some other caterpillar killer at this time.

 

[brian420088]

how about to use some chemicals to kill them

 

[Oliver Buckle]

how about to use some chemicals to kill them

The problem with chemicals that kill is that they are not specific and tend to kill everything. Some people have been doing an experiment for a few years cleaning number plates before a journey then recording how many dead insects there are and how far they went at the end. The results are alarming, there are only a fraction of the flying insects there were a few years ago, and I think that is only part of the story. I am 76 and can remember when I was a boy and we drove down to Kent to go camping we would have to stop half way to clean off the windscreen, now I drive three or four times that distance and see almost nothing. These things may not always be attractive, but they are part of the chain of life, and actually we depend on them for our existence, some farmers are already having problems with pollination for example.
Not all these chemicals break down, then they end up in rivers and ultimately the sea, where they kill indiscriminately, some do break down, but not completely into their elements, so what they break down into can be pretty nasty too.

 

[headfullofbees]

The problem with chemicals that kill is that they are not specific and tend to kill everything. Some people have been doing an experiment for a few years cleaning number plates before a journey then recording how many dead insects there are and how far they went at the end. The results are alarming, there are only a fraction of the flying insects there were a few years ago, and I think that is only part of the story. I am 76 and can remember when I was a boy and we drove down to Kent to go camping we would have to stop half way to clean off the windscreen, now I drive three or four times that distance and see almost nothing. These things may not always be attractive, but they are part of the chain of life, and actually we depend on them for our existence, some farmers are already having problems with pollination for example.
Not all these chemicals break down, then they end up in rivers and ultimately the sea, where they kill indiscriminately, some do break down, but not completely into their elements, so what they break down into can be pretty nasty too.

Could that be explained by the fact that there are probably twenty times the number of vehicles to share the insects?

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Could that be explained by the fact that there are probably twenty times the number of vehicles to share the insects?

When I first heard it I said "Is it because modern cars are more aerodynamic?" and my friend who is an instructor with the British pistol shooting team said "No, when I drove down through France for a competition the windscreen became smothered in insects." France still has many small farmers rather than large, efficient farms and a much more widely distributed population, less pesticides.