earwigs and little white flying things

[sarah]

my brassica bad is giving me cause to sigh. the net i so carefully rigged over the seedlings are now full of cabbage whites and seems to keep them in rather than out.  thats not so bad as th ebed is small and i can squish on a regular basis but there is another beastie which i dont recognise, its a tiny white dusty fly on the undersides of the leaves and whenever i inspect the patch the little white flies fly off in a cloud of ...flies.  more like little midges really.  what are they? what do i do about them?  also while i am on the subject of mini beasts i have a problem with earwigs getting into my sweetcorn.  can i do anything about them? :'( :'(

[sarah]

[Robert_Brenchley]

That's whitefly. Not sure you can do much about them unless you want cabbages sarurated with noxious chemicals. Same goes for the earwigs. They probably won't do much harm, if any, if the plants are healthy.

[tim]

This is the other thing to look out for - http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0504/mealy_cabbage_aphid.asp

[sarah]

thanks Robert. thanks Tim i'll look out for the mealy things. think i might as well remove the netting, i guess they are too big for pigeons now.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Brassicas are never too big for pigeons, unfortunately.

[tim]

And I just sold my air rifle!

[AndrewB]

I think I have the little white things on my sprouts- they all scatter like dust when I disturb the plant.  Is there an organic solution?

[supersprout]

Hi andrew, like robert says, if you have healthy plants whitefly are startling but won't do any damage - just try not to breathe in when you're working around them ;)