"John Savage" wrote in
"Farm1" please@askifyouwannaknow writes:
Om were you thinking of the cabbage grubs that are laid by the
white
cabbage butterflies? If you were then this does work. Make up
some
fake cabbage butterflies (I use the white opaque plastic form old
milk
cartons) and mark then so that they have the black markings of real
cabbage butterflies with a felt tip pen and then put them on bamboo
stakes and put them around your cabbages. The cabbage butterfly is
territorial and will go elsewhere if it thinks that that cabbage is
already taken by another cabbage butterfly.

Why bother making plastic b'flies? Just catch some real ones, add a
dab of
wood glue and fix them to the end of sticks that you can move around
your
plants as needed! That way you reduce the population of moths into
the
bargain! But I admit the real ones are not as rain resistant as the
plastic
replicas.

I'll bet you took the wings off flies as a youngster :-)))

It took about 3 minutes to cut up a milk carton and put a few spots of
texta on. It would have taken much more time for me to try to catch
the blighters.

For Australian readers: Noisy miner and Indian mynah birds just love
catching moths on the wing. Currawongs are good at it, too.

But do you have any ideas for getting rid of currawongs? The mongrel
*******s eat smaller birds and I need my wrens for aphid patrols.
BTW, the aphids have arrived and still not a sign of any ants anywhere
near the roses but the wrens are very active.