If you ever grow a few plants including broccoli, you might ever encounter caterpillars sometimes. This is normal especially when you use organic principles in your garden.
However, the green caterpillar on broccoli doesn’t mean you need to turn your broccoli off forever, here are the tips for you!
1. Use Bt Spray
The first thing you can do to your broccoli is to apply Bacillus thuringiensis using a spray. Bacillus is a kind of bacteria that can infect caterpillars naturally without giving any bad impact on humans or the environment.
Bacillus is perfectly safe, it only infects selected living things such as caterpillars or other pests. You should apply this spray every afternoon with a ratio of 1 teaspoon per liter.
2. Hand-Pick
The second method you can use to get rid of cabbage worms on broccoli is picking them with a glove. This method might be quite hard to do especially when you have a lot of broccoli plants.
5 Veggies to Plant in August and September and How to Grow Them
3. Neem Oil Spray
If you want to prevent the caterpillars in organic ways, then neem oil is the best option. Neem oil has a great function to control caterpillars with no damage to other beneficial creatures.
You can pour 2 ounces of neem oil in a gallon of water then shake it until it is perfectly mixed. Spray neem oil in the evening, once every two weeks.
4. Soap and Water
If you feel a bit hard to find a few ingredients above, then you can make fluid using soap and water. This fluid won’t kill the caterpillars but it can make them stop eating your plants.
5. Chili Spray
Another effective way to get rid of the caterpillars is using homemade chili sprays. You need to combine dried chilies with hot water then mix it again with liquid soap.
Are broccoli worms harmful? The answer is no. Green caterpillar on broccoli shows that the broccoli didn’t have a large amount of bad chemical material. We need to control it so it won’t cause too much damage to our plants.