You go to great lengths to have healthy growth and ‘bang’ your plants get hit by some bug or another. What do you do for a living?

As more and more of us worry about climate change from chemicals and the like, we fall back on the old ways of controlling. This means, in general, a natural control for all those insects that feed on our crops.

Cabbage Month:

This month it lays its eggs on cabbage leaves and the result is caterpillars. The rapid loss of leaves from your crop is the consequence of this.

The best and safest way to deal with this is to take a bucket of hot water and go around the plants every day, remove the caterpillars and drop them into the bucket. This takes time and is unpleasant.

A better way is to catch the month before the eggs are ugly. To do this, place a small board (the size of a coaster is ideal) around the growing area, spread some molasses on it, and you’ll catch quite a few months.

If you have a lot of rhubarb, use the discarded leaves to make a strong tea, let cool and pour over the crop, giving them a good steep. The idea here is that the odor given off confuses the moth and it will go elsewhere. This should be done every four or five days, more often if it rains.

I’ve tried this and it works, the only problem is that you need a lot of rhubarb.

Now this is what cabbage moths fear because it kills them. It’s called fire spray. It really works well on most insects and plants.

This is how you do it:

4 bulbs of garlic

6 large chili peppers or 3 tablespoons chili powder.

4 squirts of liquid detergent

1 large tablespoon full of vegetable oil

35 fluid ounces of water (7 US cups)

Put everything in a blender and then run it through a coffee filter or something similar.

Store it in a jar in your refrigerator with a label.

If your blender isn’t big enough to take all that water; put as much water as you can and add the rest after mixing.

Put the mixture in a garden sprayer and do a little trail first to see what effect it will have on your plants.

Spray it on both sides of the leaves and whatever you’re sure of, spray it on the ground around the plant.

I spray it in the rat holes and find that they soon move on and settle elsewhere.

It was my neighbor from my plot who gave me this recipe; it comes with a warning.

Always wear gloves and eye protection. Wash your hands after use.

Mist your crop every three to six days or more often if it rains.

When the cabbage moths are gone, I switch to a much lighter deterrent.

I use a natural liquid soap like Aloe Vera or similar. I put 4 ml in two pints of water and spray around my crops once a week, on both sides of the leaves.

I think this keeps most pests away. If there is any cabbage moth buildup, go right in with another dose of fire-fighting spray.