better from the bugs

Can see some improvement on my garden plants since I went back to my old habit of throwing soapy dishwater over them. Also have been hand-picking caterpillars, pinching leaf hoppers when I can (they're fast) and wiping cabbage looper eggs off the underside of leaves. Newer growth in center of collards no longer has the bug holes!

Been tossing soapy water over all the garden. In the permanent herb bed, sorrell looks great now- I need to start eating it.

Lemon balm finally has some leaves reaching decent size.

Sage looks a lot better (it was getting damaged by leaf hoppers).

I cut nearly all the tatsoi down to ground, again. This plant of all in the garden is still riddled with bug holes. Figured if I couldn't stop the bug, I'd better beat them to it, and eat the greens myself. (Added to scrambled eggs this time).

At first I thought the tiny holes were from flea beetles? but the chewed-away edges, with damage advancing fast, more like caterpillars. Then I found their frass, but search as I might among the leaves, under them, in between the tiny new growth at crown,

I never actually found the caterpillars until I drowned them out while rinsing the leaves for consumption. Cabbage loopers:

I have a new control against them, and it's going very well. I made this insect net. It doesn't look tidy, but it works great. I bent a coat hanger into a rough circle, unwound the end of my roll of window screening, found it was stapled to a wooden pole, used that as base and sewed the screening around the edge of the coat hanger wire as a rim, and together in the back in a rough rectangle. More often than not, I catch the white cabbage butterfly I'm after. I stomp on them. I'm seeing far fewer in my garden now.

Incidentally, my tomato plants have revived since they got soap treatment and compost feeding, too. I have more new cherokee purple tomatoes ripening!

Speaking of caterpillars, here's two I don't automatically destroy. Swallowtail caterpillar crawling away from the parsley planter it had been feeding in. Looking for a spot to make its chrysalis now.

And the tiniest woolly bear caterpillar I've ever seen. Woolly bears grow into isabella tiger moths, I found out.