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fluttered in and deposited eggs. These hatched into caterpillars, which then proceeded to demolish the cabbages. (For future reference this is best avoided by covering the developing cabbages with horticultural fleece, through which the butterflies cannot

are unlikely to find on the shelves of your local garden centre. It was the chemical used in the first aerial crop dusting experiment in 1921, when it was used to control caterpillars on catalpa trees (crop dusting was dramatised in Hitchcock's North

. The first is relatively straightforward: the mullein moth caterpillar. These are stripy chaps that start quite skinny, but rapidly become as fat as witchity grubs by eating verbascum leaves at a terrifying rate. I grow the gorgeous Verbascum bombyciferum

by boiling). They also provide food for the caterpillars of some of our loveliest butterflies, including red admirals, small tortoiseshells, peacocks and the lovely comma . They not only feed butterflies and ladybird larvae, but can also feed us (although

jam) and watched the ladybirds stumbling around like the bride's uncle at a wedding reception. I also wandered off to the vegetable garden and sneered at the caterpillars on the kale leaves.And now, as I sit here in my office there is a large and noisy

in the lawn? Not on my watch … squirt. Squirt … out damned blackspot. Caterpillars? No way, Jose … squirt, etc, etc. The default action was to reach for easily accessible and much-advertised chemicals.A couple of decades before that not only did gardeners kill

a hot bath and a glass of something restorative.May the caterpillars discover that synchronized swimming is infinitely preferable to cabbage munching.May your tomatoes be strangers to blight.May you always have just the right number of pots to hand