I know how to stop that critter! I have a large veggie garden that is critter free! how? My husband put up an electric fence around the whole garden. It is only about a foot high. There are three strands of wire. The bottom wire is an inch from the ground, the second one an inch from the bottom wire, and then an inch to the top wire. No animal can climb up or dig under without touching the wire. And once they hit it, that is the last time they will come near your garden. Now for deer. Yes, they can step over the wire, and that is where one of the Scarecrow Water Sprayer comes in. Buy one of those, and your garden will be deer and bird free. Now if I can only figure out how to electricute bugs.

I was going to ask if you had deer in the area but you already mentioned it a couple of entries ago. When I looked at how neatly all of the leaves of your broccoli were nipped off the first thing I thought of was deer. We live way out in the sticks, so to speak, and have a lot of deer. This evening I saw 6 does out nipping off the tops of my wildflowers. This spring a doe and her yearling fawn managed to break through a weak spot in the 8' fence we have a around the garden. All of my broccoli and brussels sprouts were nipped off as cleanly as yours appear to have been. I'm betting your local deer are the culprits. The cages you built should take care of the problem nicely. Good luck with your next crop of broccoli. Actually, if you haven't pulled the damaged plants yet they may recover. Mine did and I'm harvesting wonderful plate sized heads of broccoli now. Gail

Are you seeing roundish holes with clean borders? Or does it look like little teeth have been munching on your greens? Cabbage moths (those white butterflies you see flitting happily around the garden... the ones that I used to LOVE and now run around yelling at...) will lay eggs on your brassicas, which broccoli is, and sometimes lettuce (from what I've read) and then the resulting caterpillars will voraciously eat through your leaves. The holes start out very small, a little larger than a pinhole, when the caterpillars are about 1/2 a cm long, and will get increasingly larger as they eat and grow. If you see a fresh hole, look closely around it and see if you notice a green caterpillar around it. They blend in amazingly well, but once you know what you're looking for, you can spot them more easily. When they get out of control in my yard, my collards end up looking like someone ate all the leafy parts and just left the ribs.

I've found two different beetles really chew huge holes in bigger leaves and eat the youngest ones entirely, and Japanese beetles seem to love mine, though they only recently arrived in my garden and most likely will prove a major problem. Theres' also a much larger beetle with beige overall shells with black spots, which I've never identified, and that one loves them as well. As for not seeing anything, I'd assumer you have looked very carefully, and in some cases those beetles are very good at conceiling themselves and you have to look hard to find them. Nocturnal munchers that live elsewhere during the daylight hours are also good candidates, though most caterpillars will stay with the food source as will the beetles. I'd guess snails love them as well, and those would depart during daytime hours.