I am trying to remain organic in my gardening practices, which up to this point has been relatively easy. Then I went looking for an organic pesticide. That was a serious challenge. Bottom line - forget the big box stores!

I finally went to my local plant nursery/greenhouse, and discovered they had a small endcap dedicated exclusively to organic pesticides and herbicides. I chose Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew, which is a bacterial based pesticide put out by the Dow Chemical company.

After waiting for the rain to evaporate from the plants, I sprayed the product on. I even sprayed one of the cabbage butterflies. At first the kohlrabi did not take well to the dead bug brew, but quickly recovered.

The real problem is that the cabbage butterflies seem to be showing up in greater numbers. I don't have much experience with how quickly pesticides work, and I realize I have quite a few plants in the cabbage family growing, but it seems to me I should have reduced the problem. Has anyone ever used Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew, or could you give me a few pointers on how fast pesticides are supposed to work. In college I remember and entomology professor telling me that bug sprays like Raid don't work immediately. Certainly ant poisons don't work immediately or only the few ants eating the poison would die and not the whole nest.

Anyway - so "directly" it won't kill the cabbage butterflies, as they don't munch on the leaves - their larva do (the little green worms). The larva will be killed by the spinosad very quickly - at the very least over night. And eventually, the butterfly population will start to disappear, as you are killing all of the larva.

Hope that helps explain things a bit.