usually I just dust them with BT. A popular name is dipel dust. you may not get them all but it will get most of them. Unfortunately it doesn't work real good when the rain washes it off. You may have to reapply it after the rains.

Hey, Kim. Same problem here. Per Dawn's suggestion, I use spinosad for those. It's not a chemical. It's organic, but it is broad spectrum, so I use it sparingly and selectively. For the case of grub worms and/or cabbage worms I use it in liquid form to coat the contaminated veg and as a soil drench in the infected area. Reapply if it rains.
Spinosad

Spinosad is a primary ingredient in Sluggo Plus (but not regular Sluggo which is only for slugs). Sometimes, it's not easy to find locally. Or, like I found, it can be found in bottles in only Spinosad ingredients in farm storms. It's handy to have as it is good for tent worms, rabbit ear mites and a host of other applications. It also does a terrific job of killing those darned pill bugs.

Last year, my first year, growing cabbage I played around. I left the cabbage be without much care or worry to see if it would tell me how well it likes the soil and what sort of hazards exist. It loved the soil, but it soon became covered in the cabbage worms. I let them have at it. Eventually, the cabbage worms became all slimy and gooey in death. There is a natural bacteria or virus or (something) that easily kills these guys. They're trying to develop and patent this army worm killer, they call it, to sell. Apparently, it is in my environment. Since I've lost that garden, I'll never know. I had intended to allow some of my cabbage to be unkempt and see if they would return in that same environment and if the worm disease was present and would kill them off quickly. You know, like a sort of science experiment. I really wished I could have had the chance to follow through. I find the natural stuff fascinating, but for anything I wanted to be certain to save it was Spinosad that did the trick.

Kim, When I found them on my plants a few weeks ago, I handpicked every single one that I could find. Yes, it took a while, but every single one you miss will reproduce and give you dozens more. I handpicked three days in a row, searching hard for any that were smart and were hiding and that I'd missed the previous day because they were hiding. All was well for a few days, and then a bunch more hatched out. So, I sprayed with a liquid product containing Bt 'kurstaki', the same bioinsecticide that Robert mentioned labeled as Dipel dust. Bt 'kurstaki' is a bacteria that targets only Lepidoptera. It is not a contact killer. It gets into their body where it wreaks havoc on their digestive system. It takes the caterpillars a day or two to die, but they stop feeding shortly after ingesting the Bt. However, it will kill butteflies and moths, so I apply it late in the afternoon or early evening when the butterflies are not active and I take great care to avoid getting it on nearby flowering plants. I spray the plants thoroughly, including the undersides of the leaves which is where the cats stay after hatching. I haven't had to spray since but I'll spray again today because we have had a monstrous amount of rainfall since I last sprayed and I am sure all the Bt has washed off my plants. The product I have on hand is made by Southern Ag and is in a small white bottle. I bought it at Home Depot but I also usually see it at feed stores and farm supply stores. The one I usually buy is named Thuricide, but it was sold out. No problem. It and the sort of generic-looking version from Southern Ag have exactly the same active ingredient.

There are several different kinds of caterpillars that target brassicas, and I see the butterflies and moths flying around in my yard every day so I stay vigilant and check the plants daily for new cats. I usually spot them shortly after they've hatched out and are incredibly tiny---so tiny they are hard to pick up. I just roll a lint roller over the underside of the leaf and those tiny ones stick right to it. That's why there's always a lint roller in my garden tool bucket.

netting over the brassicas is the way I'll probably go next time. My brocolli looks like swiss cheese.

More than 35 years ago, when I had a subscription to Organic Gardening magazine, there was an article about homemade pest control. Not for weak stomachs. You searched for dead bugs or worms, collected them, ground them up with water in a blender, strained and sprayed. The idea being that whatever killed them might be contageous. I assume a plant covered in dead brethren might be off putting to a bug, who knows. I never tried it, at that time there were no DEAD bugs in my garden. But Bon's dead cabbage critters made me think of it.

That's an excellent suggestion that I will keep in mind!

I only have one plant that looks like Swiss cheese because I noticed it probably not the first day the worms were on it (it was raining for days on end and I wasn't in the garden), but about the second or third day. I handpicked the worms aggressively to prevent the rest of the brassicas from turning into Swiss cheese plants, and then I sprayed. Some years I use Agribon-15 or Agribon-19 over hoops to protect the brassicas, but this year I didn't.

Amy, I have read the same thing, but never tried it. First of all, I'm not going to put insects in my blender. Secondly, any disease that would kill damaging caterpillars like cabbage loopers and imported cabbage worms also would kill the caterpillars that turn into beautiful butterflies and moths that I like having in my garden.

I loved Organic Gardening magazine and read it several decades. Before it was reborn this year as an organic lifestyle magazine, its' usefulness had faded a great deal in the last decade or so. It just got to where it was more about politics and lifestyle than hands-on gardening and I'm not sure the new incarnation will be any better, but it is what advertisers want. A magazine that cannot attract advertisers cannot survive. I have some Organic Gardening magazine issues that date back to the 1970s and 1980s and they have much more hands-on, practical advice that you just don't get any more in the newer, slicker, lifestyle publications.

There are no new imported cabbage worms or cabbage loopers in my garden, but I see their parents-to-be flying around in my yard and garden this morning. All the wild things are loving the sunshine. The garden is full of birds, toads and frogs today, so maybe they're eating the caterpillars. The wild things do a lot of insect control for me, particularly since I grow so many plants specifically to attract them, but they are not necessarily good at finding the cabbage worms on the undersides of big old cabbage leaves.

My lettuce table is just outside my back door and I still didn't see them on the tat soi (sp?) till they had done a lot of damage. They looked like a variation in color on the stem until I touched them. Made DH pick them off. ;)

I don't like touching caterpillars. They feel like soggy gummy worms. I just keep a box of disposable blue nitrile medical gloves in my garden tool bucket and, when I need to hand-pick pests, I put on a glove so my skin never has to touch them.

Good idea Dawn. I cant see them is my problem. My friend saw some today and also said he saw leaf hoppers whatever that is.

Kim, Just watch for the holes in the brassica leaves and, when you see them, flip over the leaf and look underneath and the odds are you'll see little green worms. Newly hatched ones may be 1/16" or smaller, but they grow quickly. I try to find them while they are so tiny that they are hard to pick up---you can roll a lint roller over the back of the leaf and it will pick up those tiny ones for you. Or, just spray regularly with any caterpillar killer product containing Bt 'kurstaki' and you won't have to worry about seeing them because they'll be dead. Rain does wash it off, so right now it is hard to keep it on the plants, but hopefully the heavy rain won't last forever.

Leaf hoppers are very small (most only reach maybe 1/4" in length max) and cause a lot of trouble. They insert their mouth feeding parts into a plant and suck the sap out of them, causing damage to the leaves. More importantly, they are really bad about spreading diseases as they do that. Most leafhoppers (aka hoppers or plant hoppers) are specialists but a few of them feed on a wide range of plants. Grape leaf hoppers plague grapevines and potato leaf hoppers prefer potatoes and other solanums but also feed on alfalfa. Beet leafhoppers don't eat only beets and you may find them on many garden plants. That's not a good thing because they spread the curly top virus, including spreading it to tomato plants. For small insects, they can do a vast amount of damage, which is commonly referred to as hopper burn. I saw them here about 3 weeks ago. We usually have 2 or 3 (or maybe more) generations per year. The damage they do is very distinctive, resembling a disease more so than insect damage. I think the TAMU Tomato Problem Solver has an image in the insect section of hopper burn on a tomato plant.

I sometimes see them and their damage only in spring. I think in drought years, they don't stick around long or maybe they have trouble reproducing in hot, dry conditions.

I'll link something from OSU that has a photo of one. Be advised, the leafhoppers come in many colors.

Dawn

Beet Leafhopper Info from OSU