Vinegar and Cabbage Moth

About two weeks ago I discovered that my lovely Bok Choy and Pok Choy was being eaten by a very tiny caterpillar- this little bugger was about 0.5 cm long, green and thin. It looked suspiciously like the caterpillar on the cabbages, which I have ignored to date as I'm not a cabbage fan and the caterpillars didn't appear to be eating anything else!

Bok Choy is more than I am willing to sacrifice and I had read about using vinegar as a pesticide- I mixed 50:50 vinegar and water in this hand sprayer and sprayed all over the leaves in a fine mist- undersides, top, near stem etc. As I had some left over, I decided to use it on the cabbages as well.

Its been about ten days since the spraying, and whilst the bok choy and pak choy continues to suffer, the cabbages have done very well!


Here is a cabbage- the outer leaves clearly destroyed and usually the newer leaves are quickly eaten, but these ones are almost untouched.

I'm very pleased and today I added chilli to the vinegar and water mix to try and save the bok/pak choy. Unfortunately, it was still chunky and blocked the sprayer, so tomorrow I'll sieve it and go again.