What’s eating my brassicas?

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A couple of months ago I was very busy sowing seeds of all sorts, mainly vegetables, to stock my plot. Among the seeds I sowed were Brussels sprouts, summer cabbages, ‘Cavalo nero’ kale, purple-sprouting broccoli and cauliflowers. All seemed to go well at first, I potted the seedlings into individual pots and then when the weather warmed up a bit I started planting them out. First the sprouts, then the broccoli, then the caulis, cabbages and kale. But then, after a few more weeks and when the sprouts were already about a foot tall and looking very healthy, something started to attack them and in short order many were reduced to stems with just the midribs of leaves. I couldn’t see any caterpillars on them at all. I thought it might be pigeons, they are reputed to eat brassicas although I never had a problem before, but we do have a lot of them around so perhaps they suddenly developed a taste for them… I covered the plants in netting. The problem persisted and we had some wet weather so I thought perhaps I was wrong and it was in fact slugs and snails. I resorted to slug pellets (the other-wildlife-friendly variety), although it seemed odd that molluscs should munch through my relatively tough sprout plants and not touch the fresh tender lettuce growing right next to them! Still I haven’t got to the bottom of this. Whatever the culprits are moved on from the sprouts to attack the cauliflowers next, then the broccoli and now the cabbages. What were healthy vigorous plants are now just skeletons. It’s all very dispiriting. I do have some more young cabbage and kale plants, but now I’m afraid to plant them out, and I gave away the excess of the others. I have sown some more cauliflowers but of course they are two months behind the first lot! At least so far I haven’t had any problems with my beans, peas, potatoes or courgettes. I’m just glad I’m not a farmer! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.