Homemade Cabbage White Butterfly Spray - My Tonbridge Allotment Test

    cabbage white butterfly spray   

                 

  My Tested Spray to Deter Cabbage Whites & Other Pests— Garlic + Kaolin Clay. 
This mix also deters mice, slugs (and possibly badgers, maybe try extra garlic, not tested on badgers yet)

Right, if you’re sick of cabbage whites turning your brassicas into lace curtains, this is the one I use down in Tonbridge. No poison. No fancy chemicals. It’s just two things that work together — garlic to put them off, and kaolin clay to physically stop the little blighters. Why it works — and it does work,

The garlic bit: Cabbage whites find your cabbages by smell. That strong sulphur hit from garlic masks the brassica smell. They get confused, can’t find where to lay, and bugger off somewhere else. The clay bit: Kaolin dries as a fine white dust on the leaf. Three jobs — it hides the green so butterflies don’t see it, it irritates their feet so they don’t like landing, and if any caterpillars do hatch, it gums up their mouths when they try to chew.
My Tonbridge Recipe — The Messy Gardener Way Don’t use raw pottery clay from eBay, it’ll block your sprayer solid. You want proper horticultural or cosmetic kaolin — the fine stuff.

1. Make the garlic stink first: Two whole heads of garlic, not cloves, HEADS. Blitz them in a blender with a litre of water. Leave it overnight in a bucket.
2. Strain it like your life depends on it: Pour it through cheesecloth, muslin, or even a pair of tights. Get every bit of pulp out.
3. Add the clay: Whisk in 50-60g of horticultural kaolin. Little and often, or it clumps.
4. Add a sticker: A teaspoon of washing up liquid — stops the mix rolling off waxy cabbage leaves. Cheap, does the job.
How I use it on the plot Keep shaking it. Clay doesn’t dissolve. Shake every 30-60 seconds or it sinks. You HAVE to re-do it. Heavy rain? Respray. Watered overhead? Respray. New leaves? Respray.
Every 7-10 days in summer. Washing it off: Just clay. Rinse your cabbages in the sink — white dust comes straight off. It’s not magic, you’ve got to keep on top of it, but for a completely organic, no-poison method. it works for me here in Kent.

NOTE: make sure to empty and thoroughly & clean your sprayer after use, otherwise the clay will dry and clog it.

The Messy Gardener, Digger Dave