Cabbage pests: Thorough raking protects winter vegetables

Created: 02/10/2022, 15:00

By: Anna Katharina Kusters

Cabbage is the ultimate winter vegetable.

Those who plant it often have to deal with pests.

It often helps to take care beforehand instead of afterward.

Many animals cavort in the ground and in the air.

Unfortunately, there are also many who are after the lovingly planted cabbage in winter.

However, gardeners can forestall a pest infestation and take preventive measures in the garden.

Cabbage pests: Thorough raking protects winter vegetables

The cabbage whitefly can cause a lot of damage.

© Nigel Cattlin/Imago

It may not be everyone's favorite vegetable, but cabbage is packed with healthy and important nutrients and should be a regular part of your diet.

Not least because the right nutrients can also help with sleep deprivation.

Winter vegetables provide the body with essential vitamins during the cold season, for example, which the immune system needs to be able to fight off bacteria and viruses.

Gardeners who still have space in the garden and have decided to grow cabbage will be richly rewarded.

You can get Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, white cabbage and many other varieties straight from your own garden onto your plate.

When caring for the cabbage varieties, however, you should not lose sight of the pests.

Because they are usually the only thing that bothers the undemanding plants.

The following cabbage pests are particularly widespread:

• flea beetles

• Mealy cabbage aphid

• Whitefly

• Cabbage White

• snails

• cabbage fly

• Clubroot

If you pay attention to a few things right from the start, you can easily keep the annoying troublemakers at bay and protect your cabbage.

Cabbage pests: flea beetles, mealy cabbage aphid and whitefly

All three animals can harm the cabbage plants.

Gardeners recognize flea beetles by the small, round feeding holes that form on the leaves and the animals jump up as soon as you touch the cabbage.

Even seedlings are not safe from the pests.

It helps to rake the soil regularly and water the cabbage well.

It is also good for the cabbage if it is given a net to protect it after the spring harvest.

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With an infestation of the mealy cabbage aphid, the leaves of the cabbage quickly curl at the edges and turn yellow after a while.

Then it only helps to cut off the affected leaves and dispose of them in the residual waste.

Harvesting early prevents the pests in the leaves from surviving the winter.

Whitefly can only be spotted when garden enthusiasts turn over the cabbage leaves.

Small, white animals then sit on their underside.

As a result, the cabbage does not grow properly and the black sooty mold fungus grows on the droppings of the animals.

He ends up being responsible for the destruction of the cabbage plant.

A mixture of rapeseed oil and potash soap sprayed on the underside of the leaves drives the animals away.

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Cabbage pests: cabbage white butterfly, snails, cabbage fly and clubroot

Cabbage whites already have the object of their desire in their name.

They lay their eggs on the underside of the leaf, and their larvae later eat the leaves.

Gardeners should regularly check the leaves for eggs and caterpillars and crush and collect them.

Snails not only like to eat their way through the raised bed of lettuce, but also through the cabbage bed.

Here, too, collecting is the best and most animal-friendly solution.

Cabbage flies, on the other hand, concentrate on the roots of the cabbage and thus already weaken the foundation of the plant.

Only nets over the plants, which garden fans pull over the cabbage sprouts immediately after planting, help against this pest.

Clubroot is a slime mold responsible for undergrowth, wilted leaves and thickened roots.

To make it as difficult as possible for this fungus, cabbage should only grow in the same spot in the bed every four years.

If you spread a kilogram of quicklime on medium to heavy soil before replanting, you also have a good chance of not getting into conflict with clubroot.