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and use resistant varietiesCover the developing crop with well-pegged-down fleece from the moment you plant it. This avoids infestations of leek moth, whose caterpillars cause foliage dieback and low croppingMore on growing vegRead Pippa Greenwood's blog

by Northwest, when Cary Grant was pursued by a menacing yellow aeroplane). In Britain, arsenate of lead was mostly used to control codling moths on fruit trees, although it was doubtless very tempting to any gardeners stricken with homicidal yearnings

, they are so numerous in there that their maggots can work through several bucketloads of kitchen waste each week.These are sometimes joined by the smaller, but more delicately fluffy 'moth flies'. I haven't tried to identify these little creatures, even though

. 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

viewer. The idea was that sunlight during the day would power a small light at night to attract nocturnal moths to settle to be examined the next day. Unfortunately the light was so feeble it never attracted a single insect. I had better luck leaving

problem: the hazel (unlike many plants) cannot fertilise itself, so needs to find another tree. How to disseminate pollen from one tree to another? Many plants use insects — bees, wasps, moths, butterflies or ants — while others draw on the services

the life cycle of the lily beetle or caring for moth orchids, and in the next making bird nesting boxes or sowing seeds in recycled toilet roll tubes. That's the joy of Gardeners' World Live - offering something for everyone, and giving visitors a chance

, and certainly there have been some moth-eaten examples limping through South London streets. But now I wonder whether all the recent garden make-overs in my area have seen them off.When we moved here 10 years ago, a pleasing number of neighbouring gardens

, was a fat, green caterpillar. I've no idea what the caterpillar was; there are so many green caterpillars, and not all of them are the small cabbage white. I grudgingly decided that butterflies and moths are far fewer in number than foxgloves, and a new

imported topsoil, then tried (and failed) to sow a lawn from seed.I watched the evolution of the plot from courtyard to garden as more and more creatures visited it - blue tits and great tits, a robin, blackbird, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, slugs