My brassica nightmare

[Marb67]

Well I managed to get one purple sprouting broccoli potted on and growing healthy until it started to wilt. On closer inspection it had one main tap root and nothing else ! Is there anything I can do to encourage it to grow fibrous roots so it can get through winter ?

My Kale: A few plants still going but some kind of terrible leaf minor( never heard of leaf miner in kale). Another of my main plants potted on, doing very well has suddenly collapsed at the base of the stem. The color went bluish. Inside was a maggot.

Is there no end to the pests I have hitting my tiny garden ? Am I not allowed to grow anything ? There seem to be forces at work stopping me

[Scarlet]

Lots of pests around this year Marb due to the warm winter. Keep going, you will get some successes!

[WPG]

Sounds like cabbage root fly Marb. I've lost about half a dozen of my romanesco to them...one day the plants look fine, and the next day they're totally wilted. When you dig them up, only the tap root is left, with lots of white maggots around it. The preventative measure is to put collars round the young plants (which I did....must've been too late). If you catch the plants at the first sign of wilting you can try to dig the plant up, wash the maggots away, and replant. I tried that and managed to save 2 of the 6 plants, the others were too damaged to recover.

[Marb67]

I watered nematodes which included cabbage fly.

[WendyC]

I think the answer to all your gardening problems is clearly not gardening techniques or growing conditions or even bad luck but as you say other forces at work. Could be MI5 or possibly MI6.

[Yasai]

In my limited experience, brassicas are a pain to grow unless you keep everything covered with fine mesh. I had no way of covering them adequately this year so I gave them a miss. Defeatist, I know, but everything and anything seem to like devouring brassicas.

[Marb67]

They have even stripped my kale in the ground from last year too. All chard getting leaf miner eggs on them. I give up :-(

[BUFFS]

I only had trouble with the cabbage white butterfly grubs and found them fairly early, picked off what I could find and put them I a large bowl which has an overcurving top end so they couldn't climb out and I left this by the cabbages and left it to the birds who spent 2/3 searching around as tits, wrens, robins and sparrows seem to be hatching a second brood, still feeding them and no major pest problems as yet..

[Richard Eldritch]

I don't think I'll bother with brassicas next summer. I get a decent crop of spring greens and cabbages in the spring when they're easy to grow and the only pests are slugs and snails. I can't be bothered with cages and what not or trying to fight of the butterfly invasions.

[Noosner]

So sorry to hear this Marb! You are not having a good year. Hang on in there and hope you don't get too demoralised. One good thing - by the time it gets round to Spring next year you may have forgotten how you felt this year.

Cabbage white butterflies are laying eggs on my PSB as fast as I can wipe them off. I'm doing it twice a day at the moment.

All my other brassicas are toast this year, they've really had a hammering and I've pulled most of them up now.

[Marb67]

Grubs in all my Sprouts planted out even though they look healthy. They are very tough and hard to kill. Placed the plant and roots in water to drown them. I can't believe in a small walled garden all these pests manage to fly in. So far I have had onion fly, carrot fly, every type of leaf miner, cabbage root fly, sawfly on peas, blueberry, goosberry, whitecurrant. insane numbers of snails, and did I mention the usual infestation of thrip ? Isn't it any wonder I feel like packing in