Search - Articles

Hungry, voracious caterpillars can be found in a wide variety of colours and sizes. Some feed on fruits, roots and stems, but the likes of the cabbage white butterfly, hawk moth and winter moth feed on leaves. Although they may at first seem

The mullein moth caterpillars in my garden are still small, but they're guaranteed to increase in size by the day. These little critters - welcomed by wildlife enthusiasts and hated by gardeners - munch their way through verbascum, figwort

The caterpillars of both the small and large cabbage white butterflies are are the two culprits. The first is pale green with a body up to 2.5cm long, the second is bigger at 4cm and is yellow with black markings. The adult butterflies lay eggs

The larval form of a Lepidopteran. They are voracious phytophagous feeders and considered a pest.

plot, the cabbage white caterpillars have joined in. A number of my calabrese plants are barely alive, having been stripped down to the leaf ribs; they're crawling with the (admittedly rather pretty) yellow and black stripy caterpillars of the large

The caterpillars of the oak processionary moth are a real pest, but I couldn't contemplate killing them. I find myself in this situation regularly. So many so-called pests are creatures I'm quite happy to live alongside and I do so without a second

Despite the attentions of the cabbage white caterpillars my Brussels sprouts are doing really well. I think the calabrese acted as a kind of sacrificial crop, as the cabbage whites have gone for these first, the cabbages second and the Brussels last

. The branches are bare of leaves and several of the bushes are completely defoliated. The culprits are not hard to spot: small speckled greyish sawfly caterpillars. If they keep on like this B. thunbergii is doomed.

feeding on plants at night, and finding their caterpillars amongst the foliage. Just four years ago my garden was paved over, so finding moths here feels like real progress.Sadly, few gardeners welcome moths as warmly as they do butterflies

nibbled by caterpillars and I don't have any white foxgloves.The planting schemes in many of the gardens this year were superb. The Bradstone Biodiversity Garden was richly planted with cirsium, alliums, aquilegia and iris, and it seemed to be doing