What's Eating My Cabbage?
Everything with a mouth loves cabbage. The good news: the top suspects are easy to tell apart once you know what each one leaves behind.
The usual suspects
Imported cabbageworm
The signs: Ragged holes through outer leaves and into heads, with crumbly green droppings tucked deep in the folds.
What it looks like: Velvety green caterpillars that match the leaf perfectly; the parent is the white butterfly patrolling your brassicas all day.
What to do: Handpick, cover crops with fine netting before butterflies arrive, and use Bt while caterpillars are small.
Cabbage looper
The signs: Similar ragged holes, often more of them, between veins.
What it looks like: Pale green caterpillar with white stripes that inches along doubling into a loop as it walks.
What to do: Same playbook: netting, handpicking, Bt for outbreaks.
Diamondback moth larvae
The signs: Small irregular 'windowpane' patches where only the leaf surface is grazed away, plus small holes.
What it looks like: Tiny green caterpillars that wriggle violently and drop on a silk thread when disturbed.
What to do: Netting and Bt; they've evolved resistance to many chemical sprays, so rotate your approach.
Cabbage aphids
The signs: Gray-blue waxy clusters packed in leaf folds and on undersides; puckered, curled growth.
What it looks like: Powdery-looking gray aphids, denser and waxier than the green ones on tomatoes.
What to do: Strip badly infested wrapper leaves, blast with water, and soap-spray crevices before heads form.
Flea beetles
The signs: Pinhole shotgun damage across seedlings and young transplants.
What it looks like: Tiny jumping black beetles.
What to do: Row cover from day one; plants outgrow it once established.
Slugs
The signs: Smooth-edged holes low on the plant and silvery slime trails visible in morning light.
What it looks like: Night feeders; check under outer leaves and nearby boards by flashlight.
What to do: Morning watering, beer traps, iron phosphate bait — safe around pets and poultry.
Cabbage root maggot
The signs: Plants wilt and stall despite water; roots, when you pull one, are riddled with tunnels and white maggots.
What it looks like: Larvae of a small gray fly that lays eggs at the stem base in spring.
What to do: Collar transplants with a disc of cardboard flat on the soil, or cover beds at planting; damage is done by the time it shows.
When it's not a pest at all
V-shaped yellow lesions starting at leaf edges with blackened veins are black rot, a bacterial disease that travels on seed and splash — no chewing, and no cure but removal.
Or just point your phone at it
Snap a photo of the leaf, the bug, or the droppings, and Harold — the advisor built into Homestead Paradise — names what he sees, tells you friend or foe, and what he'd do next. Honest when he's unsure, and careful where it counts.
Put Harold's Eyes on it — free 14-day trial