My first year growing cabbages and I'm trying to stay ahead of any pests that might ruin my crop. We have a lot of bugs here and after such a mild winter it seems worse than usual. I've already seen a few whiteflies on my kale and cabbage and they usually don't show up until June. Ugh. Any suggestions on dealing with those is welcome.

While looking over the leaves on my cabbage today I found a few other things that I believe may be foes. At first I thought they were both eggs, but when I zoomed into the image the larger ones actually have legs. They seem too round to be aphids. The smaller ones on the green leaf are pretty definitely eggs. Any ideas what these are and what my best steps are. I have neem oil and might be willing to try spinosad, but that would be as far as I'd go since I'm in a community garden and folks are anxious about anything not completely organic in the plots.

You really need to cover your cabbage crops with a floating row cover as soon as they are planted to avoid pests. I have no advice on pesticides because I don't need them.

Here is a photo of my cabbage. I have floating row cover at one end and tulle fabric at the other.


DSC00765 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

I'll definitely cover them next year, but this year it is too late and I also interplanted them with other stuff so covering isn't as easy as it should be. I may just need to squish as I see them and hope for the best.

Google parasitized aphids. Does this look like what you have?

That is sort of what they looked like. Huh, any foe of aphids is a friend of mine.

Unfortunately, before I zoomed in on the image and realized they had legs, I thought it was eggs and had already torn off that part of the leaf and tossed it away. I'll have to be on the lookout for more and might keep them in a jar and see what happens.