Pests of Chinese cabbage and their control are increasingly becoming a source of discussion, as the culture is rapidly gaining popularity, and there is much less information about it in the sources than about its colored or white cabbage counterpart.
The yield of Chinese cabbage, subject to optimal soil moisture, is very high, but all the efforts put into growing cabbage are reduced to zero if the gardener ignored precautions against harmful insects.How to protect the future harvest from the invasion of voracious caterpillars, and how to get rid of pests if they have already been noticed on cabbage inflorescences?
Methods for controlling garden pests
Agricultural technology will not name a single technique that would definitely help rid the garden of all types of pests during a single application, and even with a future perspective. Some methods will be effective against gnawing insects - these include: cabbage cutworm, cabbage whiteweed, cruciferous flea beetle, long-legged mosquitoes and others.
Using other methods, we get rid of sucking type pests - these are: aphids, thrips and cruciferous bugs. A special group consists of naked slugs, which can ruin the entire future harvest of Chinese cabbage over the course of a season.
The only general rule that can be applied to all types of pests in the garden is compliance with the timeliness of the event, that is, the use of funds during the period when insects are most vulnerable in terms of development stages. In order to correctly comply with this condition, it is necessary to combine the identified pests according to the cyclical nature of their growth and transition from one state of development to another.
This will help in choosing a universal substance that affects several groups of pests at once, because they never visit the garden alone.
In total, there are three directions for protecting Chinese cabbage from pests, each of which has its own risks and its own limits of influence:
- The method of chemical treatment against pests of Chinese cabbage is considered the most effective and urgent, which is why it is used most often in large-scale field work, or in the presence of a large vegetable garden with plantings “for sale.”Chemical treatment of Chinese cabbage against pests, due to its aggressiveness, can negatively affect the beneficial qualities of the vegetable crop and even give the cabbage an unpleasant taste. However, this method is the only one that helps protect the heads of cabbage from losing their presentation and yellowing, in the shortest possible time, when there are too many pests that have reached the peak of gluttony;
- The biological method protects Chinese cabbage only if the required conditions are regularly maintained, since it does not act to destroy pests, but to reject them. The method is considered the safest, but is not used as an independent solution for treating a culture - only as a preventive measure. Also, slugs will show complete indifference to biological methods;
- Folk, “home” methods using decoctions and solutions prepared without the use of chemicals really help against pests on Chinese cabbage, but, as a rule, not for long, until the first good watering or rain. With the help of “grandmother’s” recipes, cabbage can be quickly restored from a disease caused by insect activity, but if organic ingredients or poisonous herbs, such as aconite or hemlock, are used incorrectly, the vegetables, and subsequently the people who consumed them, may suffer.
Preventative measures against garden pests
Pests on Chinese cabbage may not be guests, but quite legitimate owners - if the owner of the garden, before cultivating the soil for planting cabbage, did not carry out special soil treatment “in winter”, which implies cleaning the area from weeds, old mulch, garbage, and also deep digging.
If this is not done immediately after harvesting the previous crop, then the pest larvae remain overwintering in the ground, and in the spring they calmly move to the Chinese cabbage seedlings.
What should be done to avoid such a situation if the time for autumn soil preparation was missed or autumn prevention against pests on cabbage turned out to be ineffective?
A week or two before the expected planting of Chinese cabbage seedlings, you need to weed out the weeds, and in return, sow plants around the perimeter of the site that work to attract insects that are indifferent to cabbage, but willingly eat pests. As a rule, these are strong-smelling umbellifers or onions, tomatoes, and marigolds.
Sweet “baits” in the form of rags soaked in sugar syrup, dug shallow underground between the rows of Chinese cabbage, are also suitable. Why is this being done? Wasps will appreciate this feeding, destroying cabbage caterpillars cutworms, and garden black ants, which do not leave in their path the larvae of all pests, without exception, localized at the roots of cabbage.
Nurse insects can not only be attracted, but also purchased in specialized stores. You should pay attention to the following types of beneficial garden insects that do not pose a danger to garden crops:
- phytoseiids (mites);
- neoseiulus;
- orius;
- anthocoris.
To combat slugs and aphids, encourage the presence of ladybugs, lacewings, and hoverflies on Chinese cabbage and near plantings. Below we list the main garden pests that cause death or severe cabbage diseases.
Cruciferous flea beetles
The best protection against the cruciferous flea beetle is the prevention of its occurrence, since it is very difficult to get rid of colonies of this small insect, no more than 3 mm in size.Since the pest overwinters in the outer layers of the soil, its appearance can be prevented during the period of autumn digging and garbage collection - removing rotted leaves and mowed weeds from the territory.
If the seeds were properly treated before planting, the likelihood of them being affected by flea beetles is lower, but only if the soil was also treated - otherwise, the cabbage seedlings will be defenseless against the pest.
Among biological methods, during the period when the pest has not yet settled in cabbage plantings en masse, but individual units have already been noticed, you can try planting plants that have a strong specific odor. Onions and garlic help well, the aroma of which pests cannot tolerate.
It is not difficult to understand that the flea has already carried out its first attacks on the garden. It is necessary to examine the cotyledon leaves of the young planting at the time of their integrity. Small holes, as if left by shot and quickly drying out around the circumference - this is the main sign of the presence of this pest. A hole can also be seen on the leaf of a developing head of cabbage, but a mature plant does not lose juice so easily and adult cabbage can still be saved by taking urgent measures.
Among traditional methods, experienced gardeners primarily use spraying with garlic infusion or solutions prepared using wood ash. Ash can also be used in dry form, sprinkling it between the rows. In the same way, tobacco dust and lime (slaked) are used.
If home methods against the pest do not help, urgently rid cabbage of flea beetles, A mixture of the following components will help:
- hexachlorane 12%;
- insecticide DDT.
The ingredients are mixed in equal proportions, and Chinese cabbage is sprayed according to the scheme - 15 g of the substance per 10 square meters. meters of plot. In total, 3-4 treatments are carried out using this method per season with a one-week pause.
Aphid
The pest is of the sucking type and rarely exceeds 2 mm in size. Aphids are one of the main provocateurs of crop death, contributing to the disease of Chinese cabbage. It is easy to recognize the work of the pest - firstly, the insect, crowded into a solid living crust, will always be present right there, on the leaf of the head of cabbage; secondly, the plant itself will quickly lose its viability - it will begin to wither and become covered with brownish ulcers.
Often, cabbage leaves turn yellow entirely due to the activity of aphids.
Among biological methods, nurse insects, such as aphidius parasites and ladybugs, are effectively used against aphids. Around the garden and even between the rows, you can plant carrots or dill sparsely, releasing them “to seed.”
Methods of folk struggle begin with the simplest methods acting for the purpose of prevention - this is spraying Chinese cabbage with onion or garlic infusions - and up to complex ones, using solutions.
A universal, “home” method against aphids is tobacco decoction. Tobacco leaves (slightly less than 0.5 kg) are poured with two liters of water and kept on low heat for two hours. Then the cooled liquid is filtered, 50 g of soap shavings are diluted in it until the latter is completely dissolved, and the cabbage is generously watered with this mixture so that the pests are literally washed away from the plants.
Chemical treatment is used when it comes to saving cabbage from certain death. For these purposes, an aqueous 0.2% composition of anabasine sulfate is prepared.Take 0.5 liters of this solution per 10 square meters of area.
Naked slugs
The presence of such a pest as slugs in the garden is almost impossible to detect at an early stage of their appearance, since these creatures are active exclusively at night. The first signs of their presence are expressed in sticky, shiny marks on the soil and cabbage heads, and a little later - in visible damage to the leaves.
If slugs are noticed in other areas, but have not yet shown interest in Chinese cabbage, you should try to prevent them from reaching the plantings by scattering between the rows a dry mixture of salt, mustard powder, red pepper and ash, taken in equal proportions.
You need to sprinkle the mixture twice, with a week's pause, however, if the slugs have already shown great activity and gluttony, it is better to purchase a ready-made mixture specifically for these pests, for example, “Thunderstorm”. The drug does not affect any type of insect, so it can be used without fear of harming the beneficial fauna of the treated area.
You can protect cabbage from slugs using traditional methods, but it is useless to use them if there is a significant concentration of pests. First of all, spray with an aqueous vinegar solution (2 glasses of vinegar per 10 liters of water) and sprinkle the rows with tobacco dust or ash. If a simple option on how to deal with slugs does not have an effect, prepare a complex composition of 2 teaspoons of salt, dry mustard and red pepper mixed with a liter of ash.
Several times during the season, the mixture is sprinkled on the cabbage heads and the space between them.
There are many methods to rid the garden of unwanted guests, but the easy way, using chemical compounds, often leads to the fact that the vegetable becomes dangerous for consumption.Therefore, before treating Chinese cabbage against pests using chemicals, use 1-2 methods of the folk recipe piggy bank and, perhaps, you will be able to save the crop without the use of dangerous reagents.
