At the risk of talking waffle - cabbages and rhubarb!

[Lumpy]

OK elderly neighbour told me that her father had 8 allotments (her family had always lived in this village) and to stop cabbage root fly he would always put a 1 in piece of rhubarb in the hole before he planted out his cabbages. He apparently grew several varieties of rhubarb to make sure that it was available when he needed it.
She told me that other than that he never had problems with either cabbage root fly or cabbage whites as the rhubarb did something they didn't like.
Is there any truth is this or am I having one of my Of course the moon is made of cheese days?
Sue

[Guest]

I have never heard that one, but am very intrigued. Hopefully there is a grape that has come across this before

[Kristen]

am I having one of my Of course the moon is made of cheese days?

I think these remedies are often not all they are cracked up to be, and I prefer to take physical precautions against Cabbage Root Fly and other things - I use enviromesh over my carrots and don't subscribe to companion planting with Garlic etc. to "confuse" the Carrot root fly, nor the myth that Carrot root fly can only fly 24" high - just one Carrot Root fly messing up my Carrot crop is one too many.

"I did XXX and never had a problem with YYY" doesn't translate, in my mind, to "YYY solves XXX" - it might be that there never were any Cabbage Root Flies in the vicinity, or the husbandry of the plants / good composting skills and soil invigoration were actually the cures - I reckon that healthy soil and healthy plants accounts for a lot, plants are not stressed and thus their immune systems are not compromised and they ward off ills that would successfully attack a weaker plant.

So if I was planting Rhubarb under Cabbage plants I would also use collars and netting against Cabbage Whites and so on.

[lottie dolly]

Never heard of that before,BUT,if you either boil rhubarb leaves to make a tea,thined down as with other home brews,add a few drops of soap liquid,then spray the leaves with it,it does help,after a good rain,it needs to be don again,the other year i had a barrel with you name it in the water,horse tail,nettles,rhubarb leaves and waist,chilly,and garlic,that i believe was the best brew,so as a follow up from just the boiled RB leaves,i shall make it simple from now on and bung what ever in the barrel for next season,and it keeps over to next year if any left,or you could empty the barrel over the ground to feed it,and start a new one,each separate things have their own benefit,all this info i have learned from my time on here,

[veggiechicken]

I have read about it on the Vine somewhere. Its also mentioned by John Seymour in his Complete Book of Self sufficiency - a book that has fired me up with all sorts of crazy ideas

" Drop bits of rhubarb down each hole before you plant
out brassica seedlings, or better still, water seed beds and
seedlings with rhubarb-water. The smell of the rhubarb is
said to deter the club-root organism. This is an old remedy
but I have never tried it. ! "

[lottie dolly]

CALLING SNADGER,have you tried this on yours,

[Lumpy]

I thought it was interesting thats why I ask you knowledgeable lot. Many old traditions seem to be making there way back into modern life - I know that for a eact as I had leeches put on my badly broken leg to take down the swelling at the hospital.
I don't grow huge amounts but I might plant out a few cabbages next year and see what happens.
Sue

[arpoet]

Never heard of that before,BUT,if you either boil rhubarb leaves to make a tea,thined down as with other home brews,add a few drops of soap liquid,then spray the leaves with it,it does help,after a good rain,it needs to be don again,the other year i had a barrel with you name it in the water,horse tail,nettles,rhubarb leaves and waist,chilly,and garlic,that i believe was the best brew,so as a follow up from just the boiled RB leaves,i shall make it simple from now on and bung what ever in the barrel for next season,and it keeps over to next year if any left,or you could empty the barrel over the ground to feed it,and start a new one,each separate things have their own benefit,all this info i have learned from my time on here,

I did this a few years ago when we had the lottie. Behind our lottie were a brand new block of 200 grand flats. While the brew was boiling on the camping stove I heard a posh voice from the flats saying.. "I think the drains are blocked. You better ring the builders." It sure did stink.. but it worked and we had a super crop of cabbages and no caterpillar damage.

[Snadger]

CALLING SNADGER,have you tried this on yours,

I'm HERE, I'm HERE................

Yes I've tried it against CLUBROOT and it worked. Oxalic acid is the active ingredient and its been proven in trials to work! (No idea where it was trialled, but it was an official body)
Not sure about cabbage root fly? though I didn't suffer from it on the plants with rhubarb, but there again the plants without rhubarb had no cabbage root fly damage either.
Apparently just before the rhubarb dies off for the winter the oxalic acid flows back from the leaves down the stem, hence the reason NOT to crop rhubarb for eating late in the season.

[VolesAteMyPeas]

I've only ever heard of rhubarb being used to prevent club root. I don't know what trials Snadger has read. The only one I can find concluded that it had no significant effect. Can rhubarb prevent clubroot in brassicas?
Is it true that rhubarb can prevent clubroot? - Ashford Allotments
As for any other pests...who knows!

[Kristen]

Apparently just before the rhubarb dies off for the winter the oxalic acid flows back from the leaves down the stem, hence the reason NOT to crop rhubarb for eating late in the season.

I did wonder, reading the earlier discussion, if it would be better to use the Rhubarb leaves, rather than the stalks, under the Brassicas when planting?

[Lumpy]

Good point Kristen - leaves or stalk.
Also could a spray be as effective if the leaves were just soaked in a bucket of water for a few weeks and.....what kind of soap can you spray on the leaves.
Sue

[lottie dolly]

Good point Kristen - leaves or stalk.
Also could a spray be as effective if the leaves were just soaked in a bucket of water for a few weeks and.....what kind of soap can you spray on the leaves.
Sue

Yes,thats what i do,i only boiled some for i trial run,just bung things in a barrel of water,you know when it's ready,PEW,the residue that floats and sinks can be composted,

[Kristen]

what kind of soap can you spray on the leaves.

I use horticultural soap when I make up a spray of This & That - Neem oil is what I normall add, to combat bugs. As I understand it Horticultural Soap contains Potassium and is [generally] kinder to the leaves than detergent). I presume that Soap acts as a wetting agent / surfactant, so helps the spray stick to the leaves [but it might be that only detergents do that??]

Detergent is more likely to upset the leaves (and most domestic soaps are detergents)

The fatty acids in Horticultural soap disrupt the soft tissue bodies of aphids etc. so a spray with diluted horticultural soap, alone, is useful on those sorts of bugs (but as it is a contact spray, rather than systemic, it needs to be applied carefully to cover both top & bottom surfaces of the leaves - in fact anywhere where the aphids might be lurking - and will need repeating regularly to overcome an infestation - frequent application will break the breeding cycle, thereafter it can be applied less frequently as a prophylactic treatment).

Horticultural Soap + Neem oil is the only thing I have found effective on Red Spider Mite (Pesticide sprays also work, but very few of the ones that are available to amateurs are any good, and I only use pesticides on my ornamental plants, not on any of my food crops)

Lastly, Horticultural soap will upset the leaves of some plants, so worth testing a bit first. If I have a bad infestation I spray the plants anyway, and then wash off the soap / neem oil after a few hours to let the leaves recover.

[Mr Bones]

we seem particularly prone to cabbage root fly on the lotty but a collar made from rhubarb leaf on each plant certainly does the trick. Whether synthetic collars would work
as effectively I couldn't say, the rhubarb leaves are there and they're free, what's not to like