Garden Cress

Turns up on garden cress in cool wet spells like it does on other crucifers, showing as chalky white blisters on the leaf undersides. It seldom gets far in a crop harvested this young. Strip marked leaves, cut the patch and sow again rather than treating it.

Shiny white raised blister-pustules on the undersides of the leaves, yellow spots or blotches on the upper surface above them, and thickened, swollen or distorted shoots and stems where infection is heavy.

Strip and destroy affected leaves promptly, and harvest ahead of a prolonged wet spell - the crop is usually still perfectly usable if you catch it early. Copper can protect new growth where pressure is high through a long wet season.

Space and thin for airflow, water at the base and in the morning so the foliage dries, rotate crucifers, and clear infected leaves and debris rather than leaving them standing in the bed.

A fungal-like disease (Albugo) of brassicas and other crucifers, common in cool, wet weather. It produces raised, shiny, chalky-white blister-like pustules on the undersides of the leaves, with yellow blotches showing through on the upper surface, and in bad cases it swells and distorts stems, shoots and flowering growth.

Rarely a real problem on a crop this fast, but they hide deep in a crowded stand and are easy to miss until the leaves are in the bowl. Wash cress thoroughly before eating rather than spraying it, and skip the fertiliser - soft overfed growth is what breeds them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Occasional in a spring sowing, and disproportionately annoying because a cress stand is so short-lived that losing a patch of seedlings costs you the whole planting. Clear weedy ground before sowing; the fix is usually just to resow, which takes a week.

Seedlings and transplants toppled at the soil line overnight, or shoots chewed and notched near the base, with the severed tops left lying beside the stumps. Dig an inch down within a few inches of the damage and you will usually find the culprit: a plump, dull gray-brown caterpillar that curls into a C when touched.

Dig around each fallen plant and destroy the caterpillar - left alone, one cutworm will fell another plant every night. Replant the gaps with collars fitted. Hand-picking after dark with a flashlight works well on a small bed, and a fast-growing crop soon outgrows the vulnerable stage.

Push a cardboard, foil or tin-can collar an inch into the soil around each seedling and transplant so the stem cannot be reached. Cultivate the bed a couple of weeks before planting to expose the larvae to birds and drying, and clear grassy weeds and debris, which is where the moths lay their eggs.

The soil-dwelling larvae of night-flying moths. They spend the day curled just under the surface and come out after dark to chew through young stems at soil level, felling seedlings and transplants outright - a toppled plant lying beside its own stump is the signature. Some species also climb to gouge and notch emerging shoots and spears. They are worst in freshly worked ground, in beds that were weedy or grassy the year before, and on the first plantings of spring.

Cosmetic, but the winding pale trails ruin the look of a salad leaf, and the larva is inside the leaf where nothing you spray will reach it. Pick off mined leaves and bin them; cutting the patch young usually stays ahead of it.

Squiggly white or tan tunnels and translucent blister patches inside the leaves, sometimes with a tiny maggot visible when a leaf is held up to the light, and small clusters of white eggs lined up on the leaf undersides.

Pick off and destroy mined leaves before the larvae mature, and do not compost them - the larva is inside the mine, so removing the leaf removes the insect. Sprays rarely reach it. On a plant that regrows fast, a hard cutback forces clean new growth, and row cover then protects the fresh flush.

Float row cover or fine mesh over the crop from sowing so the adult flies cannot reach the leaves to lay, crush egg clusters on the undersides when you find them, and clear the weed hosts nearby - lambsquarters, chickweed and wild dock are the usual reservoirs. Avoid broad-spectrum sprays, which kill the parasitic wasps that do most of the real control.

The larvae of small flies that tunnel between the upper and lower surfaces of a leaf, leaving winding pale trails and translucent blister-like blotches. Because the larva lives inside the leaf, sprays rarely reach it. On an ornamental or an established plant the damage is cosmetic; on a leafy crop it is a direct hit on the part you eat.

Cress carries the mustard-oil chemistry that cues cabbage whites to lay, but a three-week crop is usually cut long before caterpillars amount to anything. Hand-picking is the entire treatment here; look the leaves over before they go in a salad.

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.

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.

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.

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.