One of the more discouraging things in the garden is seeing a lovely plant fall prey to a garden pest. One of the worst in my opinion is the cabbage maggot. Prepare...stomach turning description ahead. It is a small (1/3 inch legless maggot) that attacks stems just below the soil surface riddling the stem with brown tunnels. The adult stage is a fly. The seedlings usually wilt and die and never produce heads. It affects all cabbage family plants like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, kale, etc. Here are two photos I took in my garden this afternoon of this creature.
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on the roots
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| on my finger-note wilted plant |
Since I was planting out cabbage family plants today, I had to look up and remind myself of methods of stopping this maggot. Prevention is done according to my book Natural Insect and Disease Control by dusting the area around plants with a mixture of lime and wood ashes, or with diatomaceous earth. I have also seen it stated that spraying with juvenile stage nematodes will kill off these maggots in the soil. That is an expensive proposition however. I used the ashes and lime dusting method today. We will see how the plants fare.
On the other hand, one of the great joys of living on the north coast of California is the abundance of rhododendron plants. Our friend and neighbor Larry Moss planted dozens of them behind his house at one point and they are now a large grove. We have planted at least 20 plants over the last 6 or 7 years and one day hope to have a garden of rhodies that look like Larry's garden. Here are pictures of a few of his plants. Larry died a few years back, but we have named a portion of our garden "Moss terrace" in his honor.
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