Two ways to go, depending on how much work you want to do. Bt takes care of both the imported cabbage worm and cabbage looper. You can also use floating row covers, which keeps the butterflies and moths from laying eggs. Cabbage is one of the easiest to grow.

Farmerdilla: Sorry, but what is BT?

BT=bacillus thuringiensis

either the row cover or the BT does a great job. I can tell you also that I grabbed a few yards of nylon tulle from my sewing room and used it because I didn't have any row covers and it was great too...

Here is a link that might be useful: More about BT

Retiredprof--I had the same experience with my 4 cabbage plants this winter. Tried picking off the worms, but it just got to be too hard with all the leaves. I just gave up and the plants looked horrible. I just harvested 3 of the 4 cabbage heads, took off all the outer leaves, and the cabbage inside is good.

Is BT a spray or what?

If you use row cover, does it have to be covering down to the ground or just loosely over the top?

the covering has to be down to the ground.

I've never had a problem with the cabbage moths and I always plant cabbage in spring. Please don't give up. Sweet cabbage, green and red, is one of the many great treats of spring. I do plant them quite early and harvest early so that may be a factor in my success.

Bt dust every couple of weeks completely eliminates this problem. I keep some in a waterproof deck box at the edge of the garden, and just grab the container and sprinkle it around the brassicas once in a while as I walk by. Pretty simple.

Use the liquid.......trust me it works and you have the satisfaction of knowing the worms are really suffering.

Prof, Bt is usually available to home gardeners as DIPEL (dust) or Thuricide ( liquid spray). These are the two brandnames that usually show up, but there are others.

I also have excellent results with early spring planting of cabbage....as far as worms are concerned.

Is BT considered organic or "green?" Does it harm the environment?

Something that helps around here is having water for the birds by the cabbages. In particular robins take residence and clean up the cabbage. Not 100% safe, but good enough control. 100% organic.

No BT doesn't harm anything but worms. It's a bacteria similar to the mosquito dunks. It won't even hurt the robins that eat the worms that ate the BT.

We have tons of those moths. In fact I saw one flying around the other day. It must have seen my cabbage seedlings in the window. I tried BT last year and I had wonderful cabbage and broccoli. The only drawback is you have to reapply if it gets washed off so it works best with careful watering practices or drip systems. You need to start spraying right after planting if you want early protection but I got used to squirting my babies.

Thanks all, I'm going to try this BT stuff and I already bought some row covers for the rest of the spring crop. I was really ticked off last Fall because every cabbage seed sprouted and was going gangbusters until these evil critters arrived.

Good advice here. I think planting in the spring may help although the Cabbage White butterfly is one of the first to fly in our area. If you learn what the tiny caterpillars and eggs look like you can just squish em right on the leaf without too much gunk on your fingers. You will always miss one or two though. Row covers are also great and more of a necessity here in the Pacific NW because of a far worse problem - cabbage root maggots. Its a fly larvae that stunts and/or often kills the entire plant. With row covers on I have very little problem and get lots of nice cabbage, cauliflower (much, much tastier and sweeter than store-bought) as well as clean radishes, turnips, daikons and rutabagas. All of these brassicas suffer from root maggot otherwise.

One last thing is trying some of the quick maturing small hybrid cabbafes like Parel, Shelta, etc. Their quick growth and vigor may be enough to outgrow the nasty bugs. Ths small size is handy for couples and individuals too.

Put floating row covers over your plants then sit back and laugh as the little whit moths try to find a way in

Initially I did have some cabbage worms but kept them handpicked off. Then I had a literal invasion of some kind of black bugs about a 1/4 inch long that completely decimated my turnip greens and radishes in about a week then moved on to may cabbage. I went ahead and picked them yesterday once I saw they were under attack. Coincidentally cold weather doesn't bother them as we've had several nights down in the low 20's. Does anyone know what they are?