It's a lot easier to just pick them off with your hands if you're going through the trouble of salting them...or cutting them in half with a pair of scissors if you don't want to touch them.

If you're poking around your plants you might want to find out what the eggs look like (same look, different color depending on age) and destroy them while you're doing your kill mission on the hatched loopers.

I agree with nc-crn. It's just a waste of time and salt. Much easier to kill them manually if you're already hunting for them. Or you can spray your plants with Bt to kill the caterpillars or cover them with row covers (or other material) to keep the adults from laying eggs in the first place.

Rodney

The nasty thing about them loopers is that they grow right inside the brassica, Unlike slugs that come from somewhere else. Often when you find them, it can too late. Plus there are so many of them hiding between the leaves. I used to hose them on my cabbages. But best way is prevention and that is by covering the plants with fine netting(like nylon tulle). The loopers are the larva of those white nasty butterflies. ARRG.

This post was edited by seysonn on Wed, Nov 13, 13 at 0:07

I have heard of salting slugs - works well - and I have heard of soaking cauliflower and broccoli heads in lightly salted water after harvesting to force the loopers out of the heads - but it doesn't kill them. But never heard of salting them while still on the plants.

How much salt? Sure wouldn't use much and you'd still have to pick them off. Why not just use Bt, the standard solution, and just as organic as salt is.

Dave

I did pick off all the caterpillars I could find, I just needed to know if they showed up again. Plus I don't have any Bt on hand at the moment. My broccoli and cauliflower are really small and I've heard that the loopers could eat the whole plant pretty quickly, so I wanted to know in case they got out of control. But they seem to be gone now, so I don't think I'll need to use anything on the plants.
Thanks!

I did pick off all the caterpillars I could find, I just needed to know if they showed up again. Plus I don't have any Bt on hand at the moment. My broccoli and cauliflower are really small and I've heard that the loopers could eat the whole plant pretty quickly, so I wanted to know in case they got out of control. But they seem to be gone now, so I don't think I'll need to use anything on the plants.
Thanks!