How to Identify Cabbage Loopers

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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The next time you go out to your garden to get some cauliflower, broccoli or cabbage to munch on, beware--something else may be munching on them also. Like many snowbirds, cabbage loopers winter over in Florida and move back north for a summer spree of eating. You can identify the various stages of cabbage loopers if you know what to look for when you see them.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

Tiny little measuring tools
Black light traps
Pheromone traps

Step1

Inspect the plant leaves for eggs. Look for tiny hemispheres attached to either the upper or lower leaf. They appear greenish or yellow-white and may be in clusters of up to six eggs, but usually are a single deposit.

Step2

Measure the eggs with a millimeter measuring tool, which is the only thing small enough to measure them. The eggs are flat to the surface of the leaf and rise only 4/10 millimeters. Usually they're no larger than 6/10 millimeters in diameter. The eggs are minuscule, so this method is the most difficult when you want to identify the cabbage looper.

Step3

Discover the larvae, which begin as tiny hairy dull white creatures and then turn green as they begin to munch on the vegetation and leaves. Their movement gave them their name as they form a loop and open flat to propel forward.

Step4

Look for signs that something nibbled on your plant. The leaves of a plant that has cabbage loopers shows signs that someone or something got a little late night snack. Cabbage loopers bore directly into the head of the cabbage, as they eat their way to adulthood.

Step5

Hunt for a cocoon. The larvae spin a small cocoon and develop inside for as little as 10 days or up to 2 weeks. You can see the pupa change from green to dark brown or black inside the thin cocoon.

Step6

Understand that the development time is 18 to 25 days. They need warmth to multiply so there are fewer generations of cabbage loopers per year in Canada than there are in North Carolina or points south.

Step7

Recognize the adult cabbage looper, which emerges as a night flying moth that has a mottled gray-brown forewing. The rest of the moth varies from brown to dark brown, except the forewing that has a silvery white spot as the center. Often there is a connected U-mark and a circle and dot. These moths go for black light traps and are susceptible to the attraction of pheromone traps. If you identify cabbage loopers in your garden, head out to the store for these supplies.

Tips & Warnings

Wash your produce thoroughly. Cabbage loopers blend right into the plant. Soak the both cabbage, broccoli and other green crucifers to avoid getting additional protein with your vegetables. While they don't eat the broccoli heads, they find the leaves quite tasty. You really want to identify any problems with cabbage loopers before you eat the harvest.