Cabbage maggots are the larva of pocket-sized flies that place their eggs around the base of your cabbages . When the maggot hatch , they are right where they need to be to eat small roots and abide a meshwork of hole through larger stems and roots . Timing your plantingand clearing your garden of decompose vegetation are two measure that discourage these maggots .
Identifying Cabbage Maggots
The boodle maggot take flight resemble a house fly , but it ’s only about 1/4 in long . It is grey-haired with fatal legs , smoky gray wings , short bristles all over its body , and three black stripes on the back of its mid - section , the thorax , with one additional sinister streak on its abdominal cavity . The first coevals of the tent flap each time of year overwinter as pupae in the basis .
The pupae cases are brown and orchis - influence . You will detect them buried from 1 to 5 inch below the soil ’s open , but these pupae face are very similar to those of other insects , making certain recognition difficult .
The flies come out in the other spring , and they are attracted to moisture and rotting botany . They fly blue to the ground and deposit their eggs in cranny in the dirt or at the infrastructure of the plant they find emerging in the cool atmospheric condition .
The eggs are delicately ridged , white , oblong in material body , and about 1/8 inch long . Look for them at the foot of your cabbage stalk near the soil credit line or in the soil near your cabbage stalks .
The cabbage maggot is legless and white-hot . It measures about 1/4 to 1/3 inch long , and it is pointed at the head and blunt at the rear .
Identifying Cabbage Damaged by Cabbage Maggots
Young scratch planted in the leaping or free fall , when the weather is cooler and damper , are most at risk .
simoleons maggot eat up small root from the plant and pervade larger roots with a connection of blase out tunnels . These tunnels disrupt the plant life ’s power to draw water and nutrient from the dirt , so , above ground you will notice that infested pelf are prone to droop . Their growth will be stunted and they will look purplish or blue - gray rather than fleeceable . That off - color look , though , is a general symptom of lack of passable aliment . It is not a definite preindication of a maggot plague .
To be sure whether or not your cabbages are infested with cabbage maggots , you will need to probe the ascendent . ascendent that have been attacked by cabbage maggots will have slimy , twisting , browned tunnels eat into them and dark-brown groove eaten into the control surface . You will likely chance maggot still on and in the ascendent .
Controlling and Eliminating Cabbage Maggots
Once you have noticed the symptoms of an plague above ground , it is probably too late to stop the maggots . If you do n’t bump too many maggots when you canvass the ascendant , you’re able to stress swishing the roots around in a bucket or tub of cold water to remove the maggot and then replanting the cabbage while the maggot drown in the water . You could be putting level-headed plants at risk , though .
The in force and most certain measures to take are tone aimed at preclude an plague from occurring . Actions you may take include :
Companion Plants and Natural Predators
Since loot maggot are look forfood , planting an inexpensive ascendant crop , like radishes , near your cabbage may tempt the maggot away from the cabbage roots .
parasitical wasps and nematodes quarry on cabbage maggot , as do some subterranean beetles . Cabbage maggots are also vulnerable to some fungus line up naturally in the soil .
