Caterpillars At Night

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by sudeepbhaumick, Oct 16, 2008.

  1. sudeepbhaumick

    sudeepbhaumick Junior Member

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    About four days back I noticed my greens, particularly fenugreek, started missing leaves and now there are none left. Turns out the culprits are night time caterpillars. I dont know their species. I squashed as many as I could find yesterday after discovering them. They started with fenugreek but eventually started eating other plants too, spinach and marigolds.

    My question is are these night time caterpillars controlled by the predatory wasps and lady bugs ? If they cannot harm these night time caterpillars then what can ?

    Also there are white lines in the leaves of tomato plants. What is that and how do I fix that problem ?

    I am a newbie to permaculture and have started my roof top garden about a month and a half back. Currently am living in Pune, India.
     
  2. barely run

    barely run Junior Member

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    Re: Caterpillars At Night

    What about some ducks........would they eat the cattepillars?? ducks can be messy so you would need plenty of straw or similar on your roof top area.
    Cheers
    Cathy
     
  3. sudeepbhaumick

    sudeepbhaumick Junior Member

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    Re: Caterpillars At Night

    sorry for the extremely delayed response. Ducks was not an option for mi because the roof is not big enough to support a duck [er... i don't know really if my roof can support a duck or not but i don't think so :)].


    I searched around the Internet and found out that this is a common and serious problem in my part of the world and results in massive crop losses... The solution that farmers have now started to implement after pesticides and such have failed is as follows...

    1. BURNING BRIGHT
    These caterpillars are of a particular breed of moth. They come out of the pupae after the monsoon rains to mate and lay eggs which results in the huge outbreak of caterpillars. The farmers keep a close watch on the light sources at night and see how many moths are attracted. When the numbers grow they light huge fires to attract the moths and burn them. Some farmers use floodlights and Insect attractors.

    2. COLLECT EGGS
    Over the next few days they go out in the fields and collect the eggs and destroy them.

    3. GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
    Even then in the end they have to get their hands dirty and squish caterpillars personally.


    I installed a high wattage bulb on my roof and made a pile of rocks for my friends the lizards under it. My roof already had some lizards. As a result of which the insects would be attracted to the light and the lizards would eat them [the lizard population shot up after this event]. But by the time i set up all this the damage was mostly done and i had to personally squish the caterpillars.
     

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