Netting brassicas

[YelloDaisy]

To keep off cabbage white butterflies.The web page horticulture.co.uk says netting with a 3-7 mm mesh - what do others use - I feel the smallest holes might shade the plants. My plants are shredded this year as they grew very quickly and the usual netting wouldn't fit over.

Also what weight of mesh - garden-netting.co.uk has some but it looks a bit light weight - any suggestions?

It didn’t matter what net I used and how I secured it they still got in there. I found the only solution to this was to just not grow brassicas! 🤣

What about garden fleece @YelloDaisy ? It's what the farmers round here use for their brassicas.

I use fleece, and build a frame round the brassica bed to keep the fleece from touching the plants. I found that the caterpillars were able to stick their eggs onto the plants through the holes in netting, especially if the netting was just thrown over instead of being stretched over a frame.

Having been thwarted from using the broccoli as a nursery the cabbage whites have settled for nasturtiums and sweet rocket. From being a carpet of wide green leaves and jewel like flowers the nasturtiums are now a sad field of spikes, only the stems remain. The sweet rocket is a bit more resistant, or perhaps a bit less tasty, but it is still dripping with fat caterpillars and their excrement. I am hoping the birds develop a taste for them.

There are so many butterflies this year -I suppose that is a good thing

Don't forget the pigeons, they love to feast on the growing tips/flowers of brassicas in the autumn and winter.