Gai Lan

The brassica caterpillar complex: velvety green imported cabbageworms (larvae of the white cabbage butterfly) and inch-worming cabbage loopers (a moth larva). Both chew large ragged holes through the leaves, then work into whatever folds up at the center - head, curd, sprout, or growing crown - fouling it with green pellet droppings. Fast leaf crops are usually cut before the damage matters; slow heading crops suffer most. Nasturtium carries the same mustard-oil chemistry that cues the butterflies to lay, so it hosts them too and is often planted nearby as a decoy.

Watch for: Ragged holes in the leaves, dark-green frass in the crown, and green caterpillars that match the leaf and hide along midribs and leaf undersides. White butterflies fluttering low over the bed mean eggs are going down now - look under the leaves for the small pale-yellow eggs, laid one at a time rather than in clusters.

Prevent: Floating row cover from sowing or transplant is the near-complete fix - it stops the adults ever laying. Seal it at the soil edges and lift it only to weed or harvest. Otherwise check leaf undersides twice a week, rub off the eggs, and hand-pick the caterpillars. Let dill, cilantro, or other umbels flower nearby to feed the parasitic wasps that do this work for you.

Treat: Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki) is the one to reach for first: it affects only caterpillars and is safe around bees, parasitic wasps, and hoverflies. Spinosad also works, but it is not caterpillar-specific - while the spray is still wet it is toxic to bees and to the parasitic wasps that hunt cabbage worms for you. If you use it, spray at dusk so it dries before bees are out, and never wet open flowers, including flowering companions like dill or nasturtium. Follow the label for both. On a small planting, hand-picking and rubbing off eggs is enough on its own.

Because gai lan crops through the summer when other brassicas have finished, it often becomes the only host left in the garden and takes the whole neighborhood's caterpillar pressure. Worms also tuck into the bud cluster at the stem tip - check there before cooking.

A soil-borne pathogen (Plasmodiophora brassicae) that infects brassica roots and swells them into distorted, clubbed galls. Affected plants stunt and yellow, wilt on warm afternoons and recover overnight, and never size up properly. It is worst in acidic, poorly drained ground, and the resting spores survive in soil for up to 20 years, moving around on soil, tools, boots, water and infected transplants.

Watch for: Midday wilting that recovers overnight, yellowing and stunting with no obvious cause, and - the giveaway - swollen, distorted, clubbed roots instead of clean ones when a plant is pulled.

Prevent: Rotate at least 4 years out of every brassica, counting the fast salad ones and any brassica cover crop. Lime toward pH 7.0-7.2, since the pathogen dislikes alkaline soil, and improve drainage. Plant only clean seed and transplants, never move infested soil or plants around the garden, and grow resistant or tolerant varieties where the disease is known to be present.

Treat: There is no cure once the soil is infested. Pull and destroy affected plants - bag them, do not compost them - lime the bed, and keep brassicas off that ground for years. Rotation and pH are the whole game here.

Because gai lan is often grown as a summer filler between other crops, it is an easy way to break a brassica rotation without noticing. Count it as a brassica when you plan the beds.

Aphids are small soft-bodied sap-suckers - green, black, gray, pink, or waxy white, and mostly wingless - that gather in dense colonies on the tenderest new growth: shoot tips, buds, and the undersides of young leaves. They breed extremely fast in mild weather, so a few can become hundreds inside a week. Their feeding curls and distorts soft growth, and the sticky honeydew they excrete coats everything below and turns black with sooty mold. Ants often farm and defend the colonies for that honeydew. A few aphids are normal on almost any plant and a healthy plant shrugs them off; only dense, persistent colonies do real damage, and some aphids also spread plant viruses as they feed.

Watch for: Dense clusters of tiny insects packed onto shoot tips, flower buds, and the undersides of young leaves. Curled, cupped, or distorted new growth that never opens properly. A sticky shine on the leaves - and on whatever sits under the plant - that later goes black with sooty mold. Tiny white cast skins left behind where a colony has been feeding. Ants running steadily up and down the stems, which is often the first thing you notice. Mottled, streaked, or misshapen leaves that do not grow out can mean a virus the aphids brought with them rather than the feeding itself.

Prevent: Go easy on nitrogen: the soft, lush growth that heavy feeding produces is exactly what aphids breed on. Check new growth once a week through spring and early summer so you catch colonies while they are still small, and rub the first few out with your fingers. Leave flowering plants nearby and skip broad-spectrum sprays - ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps do most of this work for free, and they only stay if there is something for them to eat. Keep ants off the plant where you can, since they protect aphids from those predators. Water steadily so plants are not stressed, and check any new plant over before you bring it home or move it indoors, since aphids usually arrive on something else.

Treat: Knock the colonies off with a hard jet of water and repeat every few days - on most plants that alone ends it. Pinch out or prune off the worst-infested tips rather than treating the whole plant. If colonies keep rebuilding, spray insecticidal soap or horticultural oil directly onto the insects, covering leaf undersides, and repeat weekly until they are gone; treat early or late in the day, and never spray a wilted or heat-stressed plant. Avoid broad-spectrum insecticides - they kill the ladybugs, lacewings, and parasitic wasps that were about to solve the problem for you, and aphid numbers usually come back worse afterward. Anything you spray must be labeled for the plant you are treating; follow that label and observe its pre-harvest interval. On anything you eat, wash leaves, heads, and buds well before use, since aphids hide down in crowns, folds, and tight growth.

The grey waxy cabbage aphid packs into the bud cluster at the stem tip, which is the part you eat and the part a spray cannot reach. Catch them while they are still on the outer leaves, and soak cut stems in salted water before cooking.

Flea beetles are tiny dark beetles - often shiny black or bronze, rarely more than a couple of millimeters long - with enlarged back legs that let them spring away like fleas the moment you lean in. The adults chew countless small round pits and shot-holes through leaves, giving the foliage a peppered, buckshot-riddled look. They overwinter as adults in leaf litter, hedgerows, and crop debris, emerge hungry in spring, and are worst in warm dry spells. The damage is mostly a seedling and transplant problem: a small plant with a few leaves can be checked, stunted, or killed outright, while the same plant shrugs them off once it is large and growing strongly. Different species specialize on different plant families, so the beetles hammering your brassicas are not the ones on your nightshades. Some species also have larvae that feed on roots and tubers underground.

Watch for: Dozens of pinhead-sized round holes peppered across the leaves, thickest on the youngest, most tender growth. Tiny beetles that spring away as you brush the plants or lean in for a closer look - that jump is the identification. Seedlings that go lacy and stop growing, and transplants that sit and sulk instead of taking off. Damage heaviest in warm, dry weather and along the edge of a bed nearest weedy ground or last year's crop debris. On root crops, shallow narrow grooves or channels scarring the skin at harvest, from larvae feeding underground.

Prevent: Floating row cover or fine insect mesh, laid over the bed from the day of sowing or transplanting and sealed at the edges so nothing can walk in underneath, is the single best defense - and on the crops they favor it is close to essential. Leave it on until plants are large and growing strongly, or until flowering on anything that needs pollinating. Push growth: a well-watered, unchecked plant outgrows the damage, so the whole game is getting seedlings through their vulnerable weeks fast. Keep beds weed-free, since related weeds host the beetles alongside your crop, and clear crop debris at the end of the season where the adults overwinter. Rotate away from a bed that grew a related crop last year. Where you can, shift sowing dates - cooler-season and fall plantings often miss the peak of adult feeding entirely.

Treat: Row cover and healthy fast growth carry most crops through, and on an established plant the damage is usually cosmetic and needs nothing at all. Where a young planting is genuinely being stripped, kaolin clay coats the leaves and deters feeding, and spinosad will knock the beetles back. Spinosad is acutely toxic to bees while the spray is still wet - apply it at dusk when bees are not flying, never onto plants in flower, and follow the product label. Anything you spray must be labeled for the plant you are treating, and you must observe its pre-harvest interval on a crop you are picking. Yellow sticky traps are useful for telling you when the beetles have arrived. Where the damage falls on the part you eat, harvesting young often beats them outright; where you are growing for a root or a fruit, leaf damage can simply be tolerated. Larvae feeding underground cannot be reached by a foliar spray, so rotation and clean beds are what work against those.

A seedling problem here, not a mature-plant one - gai lan outgrows the damage once it is up and running. Since the crop needs no pollination, sealed row cover can stay on from sowing right through harvest.

The larvae of a small gray fly that lays its eggs at the soil line against brassica stems. The white maggots hatch and tunnel down into the roots, scarring and rotting them, so plants wilt on warm days, stunt, take on a blue-green cast, and can die outright; root brassicas are tunneled through and spoiled. It is worst in cool, wet spring soil, on transplants and early sowings, and in ground that grew brassicas the year before.

Watch for: Sudden wilting on the first warm days even though the soil is moist, stunted plants with a bluish cast, and - on pulling a failing plant - brown tunnels and slimy scarring through the roots with small white maggots inside.

Prevent: Cover the crop with floating row fabric from the day you sow or transplant, sealing the edges down to the soil so the fly cannot reach the stems, or fit a cardboard or felt collar disc flat around each stem to block egg-laying. Rotate at least three years away from ground that grew brassicas, and do not plant into fresh manure.

Treat: There is no rescue once the maggots are inside the roots. Pull and destroy badly infested plants rather than composting them, and reset the bed with row cover and rotation. Beneficial nematodes drenched into the soil help suppress the larvae in a bed you have to keep using.

Only really a risk on the earliest spring sowings into cold wet soil. Later and summer sowings, which is where gai lan is most useful anyway, largely miss the fly.

The most serious bacterial disease of brassicas (Xanthomonas campestris), and it thrives in warm, wet weather. It enters at the leaf margins through the pores and through wounds, then moves inward along the veins, producing yellow V-shaped wedges pointing in from the leaf edge with blackened veins inside them. From there it works into the stem and head as a foul soft rot. It is seed-borne as well as soil- and debris-borne, and it spreads readily on hands, tools and splashing water when plants are worked while wet.

Watch for: Yellow V-shaped wedges opening inward from the leaf margins, with darkened, blackened veins running through the wedge - the combination is diagnostic. Leaves yellow and drop, and a foul soft rot advances toward the stem, head or curd.

Prevent: Start with clean, hot-water-treated seed, since the bacterium travels on seed. Rotate at least three years out of brassicas, space plants widely for airflow, water at the base rather than overhead, never work or harvest the plants while the leaves are wet, and control cruciferous weeds, which host it between crops.

Treat: There is no cure. Remove and destroy infected plants - never compost them - disinfect tools between plants, do not save seed from an infected crop, and keep brassicas out of that ground for years. Clean seed and rotation are the whole strategy.

The main disease risk of growing gai lan through a hot humid summer, which is exactly when this bacterium is most active. Space widely, water at the base, and never work the plants while the leaves are wet.