The winter season is when we do the majority of our vegetable growing and the brassicas are an important part of the garden. This year has been a very dry year and possibly as a result I’ve noticed a surge in butterflies flitting around and depositing their eggs all over my garden. Big fat juicy caterpillars have been munching their way through my broccolis and cabbages to the point where I have had to take action.
Without any protective netting you can see the caterpillars are destroying my plants.
My first idea was to drape nets over the top but the leaves are getting squished and bent out of shape, plus the butterflies were just flying underneath the nets. Infuriating!
So I decided I needed to construct a maximum security broccoli prison that would protect my brassicas from insect attack. For materials I used some wood scavenged for free from a local pallet factory and these fairly ancient nets left over from some long ago olive harvest.
I screwed the wood together into very simple sturdy frames, and using a staple gun I attached the netting to the frames.
Now my brassicas are safe from insect assassins and it works so well I plan to build more of these all over the garden. Success!
