How to deter Cabbage Moths from your garden? with a Moth Trick of course!

Picking caterpillars off the broccoli leaves every morning is such an important job in our garden! It’s a job loved by many students as it’s also breakfast for the chooks! As soon as our 6 chooks hear the kids squeals of delight finding their breakfast, they start tapping on the door to be let out for the morning feast!

Even though this is such a fun job, caterpillars are often missed and seem to multiply over the weekends when there is no kids around. We chatted to Erica from Gardening 4 Kids and she had the perfect solution! We were not aware that cabbage moths were territorial! So she explained to us by making fake cabbage moths and placing them around the garden, it should deter them, or at least reduce the amount of eggs laid on our plants.

30-40 kids hang out in our garden every lunchtime, so we popped over with a surprise workshop for them, and they quickly got to work!

Cabbage moths were drawn on to canvas fabric and carefully cut out, while the younger kids artistically decorated them with black texta to resemble cabbage moths.

We chose to nail them onto garden stakes and they were excitedly placed around the garden. It was then a waiting and watching game. The first moth went to land in on the broccoli and then quickly flew away! YES, our cabbage tricks work! And that’s how we named this project, cabbage tricks.

The students were so pleased with their efforts, they decided to make a few for the kinder garden too! This was transformed into a whole lesson for the kinder kids who are just starting to learn about growing their own food.