cabbage pest??

I hope this is not hijacking a thread but.....
Even knowing about these pest I got bit this year again. I built my tulle covers(fliptops) just for preventing the cabbage moth/worm. I knew I had messed up several weeks ago when I saw my first moth before I had put on the tulle. It had been so cold and windy I got complacent. So when I picked the few worms I saw and I was looking, thought I was in the clear. Last week I picked a dozen or so worms out of my bed 1 and a couple from bed 5 that has the cabbage. I had killed one moth in bed 1 that got in from plant sprawl. Long story short a few days later I killed a moth in bed 5 now this is what I found. The not so little culprit is on the right side of the head with it's buddy above on the leaf in the center.

I know to submerge the harvested head in salt water to remove the worms. What is troubling me is what the heck is all these little green balls laying everywhere. When smashed they make a green juice.

I remember last week sometime seeing that you can harvest the head but leave the root and new heads will form. I would like to know if I would be better served just replanting.

Squish 'em and then my advice is to directly cover the cabbage head itself with the tulle.

What are those green things? Are they cabbage moth eggs?

CC

CapeCoddess wrote:What are those green things? Are they cabbage moth eggs?

CC

Little worm poopy pellets. You will know them well, eventually.

Would they make good compost, like earthworm poop?

CC

That is what I was hoping to hear Camp. Well it beats more eggs. I believe the moth eggs are small white balls on the underside of the leaves.

BeetlesPerSquareFeet posted this photo and the following link. I didn't want it lost so I also posted part of it in this thread.

http://animal.memozee.com/view.php?tid=2&did=14540

Thanks, sanderson!  I actually have more photos that would go well on this thread.
‘Fun’ fact: bug poop, like those round green balls, is referred to as ‘frass’

Several  caterpillars attack the cole/brassica crops. The ones I’m somewhat familiar with are:
*Cabbage‘worm’ (Pieris rapae)– not actually a worm in the scientific sense, but a green caterpillar that turns into a white butterfly (sometimes referred to as a moth because they aren’t particularly colorful butterflies)
*Cabbage looper (Trichoplusia ni) – green caterpillar, does the inchworm thing, turns into a brown moth
*Cross-striped cabbage worm (Evergestis rimosalis)– also not a worm, photo below, turns into a brown moth
*Diamondback moth caterpillar (Plutella xylostella)– another green caterpillar, becomes a rather striking, but quite small, brown/gray moth with white triangles that meet on the back to form diamonds
*Large Yellow Underwing moth (Noctua pronuba) – caterpillars start green with dashes, turn into a brown cutworm caterpillar (still with black dashes), eventually become a medium-large moth whose front wings are brown, and hidden hindwings are a bright yellow-orange

What do cabbage pest eggs look like?
Most of what I have in my garden are cabbageworms.  Here’s egg-laying behavior by the butterfly.  There’s a small white egg  in the upper left of the photo. Sometimes she lays an egg on top of the leaf, sometimes she’ll curl her abdomen down and stick the egg under the leaf.

My butterflies lay single eggs, but I’ve also seen egg clusters documented.  The eggs start white and turn yellow. That’s my fingernail for scale. The yellow egg I have scraped off kale using the edge of a piece of crabgrass.

I don’t have exact photos for the eggs of the next three moths listed above. Diamondback moths lay their eggs in small groups, and their eggs are ovoid and whiteish to greenish, and then dark gray right before they hatch.  Cross-striped cabbage worm eggs are laid in groups, and look pretty much  the same as a lot of other moth/bug eggs - like those from this tiger moth who laid eggs on lamb’s quarters weed -- but CSCW eggs are white instead of yellow:

I think these are eggs from a large yellow underwing moth on the deer netting fencing around my garden.

Why on my fencing?!? That’s no good to eat.  I figured the moths were a little daft, but apparently they have a plan, see the comment under the photo here: http://bugguide.net/node/view/332615/bgimage

Here’s a pretty much full grown cabbageworm.
 
I don’t have a photo of a cabbage looper. I haven’t noticed them in my garden, the cabbage white butterflies had a monopoly the first year. But last year I got cross-striped cabbageworms (no adult photo), and the diamondback moths and their kids. (No photos of the kids - yet, probably later this year.)

 
So remove all the eggs and caterpillars from your kale, etc.? Nope! First, make sure you know what the syrphid larvae look like (a bit like flattened caterpillars or tiny green leeches). They are part of your aphid control force, and you want to keep them:
http://beneficialbugs.org/bugs/Hover_flies/Syrphid_Fly/syrphid_flies.htm
Their eggs are tiny, long, whitish, and often laid parallel to each other.  They look similar to leafminer eggs (which I guess makes sense since both are flies), but mom will lay them where there are aphids for the larvae to eat when they hatch.
Ladybug eggs are yellow to orange and look similar to the butterfly eggs, but don't have the ridges, are more often in clusters, and, again mom is likely to lay them where there are aphids.

THIS! Is the stuff Rookie Topics are made of.

Exactly!

Here's a photo of a looper - it's not the cabbage looper, but it was on my Romanesco. Not sure exactly what sort of looper it is - they all look very similar. The cabbage looper looks like this, but without the black Zorro mask on its head.

Found this attached to the PVC frame that supports the bridal tulle covering the winter broccoli. Pupa of the "white butterfly." It's really a light creme color.