Broccoli! How long do I fight the fight till I rip the plants out?

[ABHanna4d]

My broccoli looked absolutely beautiful all season and right before it was time to pick, the bugs descended upon all my plants and it has been a fight to keep them alive.
I used DE several different times and also me and the kids would go out there often and look for caterpillars and pick them off. I even let me chickens in the garden so they could go after the caterpillars and moths...and they did!! But then the chickens would get distracted and move to the tomatoes and that was bad so Id shuffel them out of the garden and try it again the next day.
But I just cant keep ahead of these notty caterpillars!! I have about 20 plants and have only picked 3 heads of broccoli (small heads about 1 lb each)...now the weather is hot and they have just been having a terrible time. Someone told me that if I leave them and keep watering them through the heat that they will all start producing again once it cools down. First off I dont want to water and care for them the next couple months just to loose all my broccoli anyway...Second, I dont want to be providing a habitat for the caterpillars to just live and take over my whole garden!!
I just dont know what to do!! I dont want to dig up all our hard work if we still have a chance of getting some broccoli, but I just dont know when to throw in the towel and say enough is enough!!

 

[lesa]

Sorry to hear about your troubles. Gardening really does feel like war sometimes! If the leaves are not being damaged, I would cut the broccoli off and wait for it to come back. Do you know what type you planted? Some are quite famous for their side growth, others, not so much... Since broccoli is a cool weather crop, why not plant some more? Less pests and less bolting problems in the fall. If you have small heads, you can harvest, soak in salt water (to get rid of worms) and eat! Good luck!

 

[digitS']

If you think cabbage worms on broccoli are a problem, do battle with them in the cabbage! They burrow right into the curled leaves and you'd have to tear the plant apart to remove them by hand!

They also seem to prefer cabbage. I only found a couple of green caterpillars when I washed the broccoli this year but there are some heads of cabbage where the critters really got ahead of me.

There's Bt. I didn't have any early and tried to kill the worms with rotenone/pyrethrum. That never works. Then I sprayed with Bt and couldn't find a single worm afterwards.

Thuricide is the stuff I bought. It is an organic pesticide.

My Packman broccoli is finished. It is small and quick so I got the central heads then harvested one set of side shoots. The next batch of buds coming on will hardly make a forkful and the heat is really speeding them to flowering. Time to pull the broccoli out so that the zucchini and cucumber transplants between them have a chance to see the sky.

Steve

 

[journey11]

I've done battle with the catepillars on mine too. I sprayed them a couple times and would soak in salt water to get out any remaining catepillars--there were so many and they just kept coming! I was getting lots and lots of side shoots continuously, more broccoli than we could eat fresh and I froze a lot too. But once the aphids moved in (looks like a grey dust packed into the florets), I said FORGET IT and ripped them out and gave them to the chickens. I can't imagine how many more moths will be laying armies of catepillars for my garden next year. I don't think I'll do spring broccoli again, only fall. The spring broccoli grew well and yielded great, but I hate the thought of eating catepillars. It's hard to get so many out!