Lettuce covered in poop!

[ChinstrapBobblehat]

Posting in the hope someone wiser can advise.

I have two large 15 inch deep planters in my greenhouse where I grow loads of varieties of lettuce, usually trouble-free. Today I went to check on them and found the ‘soft’ lettuces, i.e. not the chard or romaine types, absolutely covered in piles of poop - big clumps on the leaves, tons of smaller bits all around the junctions of the stems and leaves.

At first I thought it was a massive bug infestation, but it was definitely poo, just huge amounts of it all over the place. There seemed to be almost no leaf damage, but I stupidly had the knee jerk reaction of thinking I should clear the infected plants. So I sheared off and composted a dozen or more big (otherwise healthy) lettuces that I’d thought would keep us in salad all summer.

When clearing the beds I found two fat green caterpillars on the soil, but again reacted stupidly by lobbing them out the door rather than trying to identify them.

So now I have a sad naked lettuce bed, all my lovely salad is on the compost and I’ve no bloody idea what the pests were or if I should have nuked the whole thing or not! Tried looking them up but there are 30+ species of green caterpillar (and have also stumbled on article about how beneficial caterpillar poop can be for soil, so feel like I’ve definitely done the wrong thing ).

Any ideas please?!

Bump. Anyone …?

I can't suggest what they might have been but I suspect that you are right that the caterpillars were responsible for the poo. I had mullein caterpillars all over my verbascums and there was poo everywhere, which makes sense seeing as they are eating the leaves all day long so it has to go somewhere.

Caterpillars produce an enormous amount of "frass".Since it's come from your lettuces in the first place, I can't imagine that it's comparable to, say, cat poo. So if it happens another time, a good wash of the lettuces before eating should be fine.

We've moved into a different world. When I was young, you used to wash vegetables (even bought ones) to remove slugs, caterpillars, greenfly, soil. Now you still wash them, but it's to remove chemical residues, and you don't get the visual reminder of the life that goes on in and around your veg.

Thanks - yes, it did occur to me the instant I’d cut them all that I should have just washed them off! But I think I was slightly concerned there’d be more eggs that might go on to infest all the other beds. I’m normally one for just rinsing everything and not mentioning to the kids what might have been crawling on their dinner 20 minutes earlier

Butterflies tend to do things in cohorts.Once you have caterpillars, particularly sizeable caterpillars rather than tiny ones you can barely see, all the eggs will have hatched out, and you won't get any more eggs until the current generation of caterpillars have pupated, emerged as butterflies, and mated.

It's one thing coming across the odd slug or greenfly as you're washing, another seeing your lettuces covered - you tend to react first and think afterwards. (Mind, I'd probably be washing the compost off, and, of course, not telling the family)

Can't you just hoik them out of the compost now and wash them? Maybe not all, admittedly, but some at least?

I've kept cut lettuces from the shop fresh by putting the stem in water before.

Thanks everyone. Good info re caterpillars - definitely won’t panic as badly next time! Sadly I think the compost lettuces are beyond redemption, but still time to start a few more ….

I had this last year and this year am growing all my lettuces in a trough under netting which is working much better!