Cabbage root maggot

[alanroy]

My very first year of veg, and I am starting to lose plants to cabbage root maggots.

I have seen a page which tells me all about them, but no suggestions on how to stop them. I pulled a nearly dead cabbage up tonight, and the stem was chock full of the little critters.

[Lesley Jay]

Sorry Alan but if it is the cabbage root fly maggots then I don't think there is a cure for home gardeners. Not what you wanted to hear. (But I would love to be wrong!)Prevention in future years would be collars around the plants which stop the eggs developing into maggots and rotation of crops, they also attack swede, turnips and radish.

[alanroy]

Its so frustrating, why can't they eat the roots of my weeds instead?

[Lesley Jay]

Frustrating is putting it mildly but you will find that as you cultivate the ground each year, exposing pests and their eggs for the birds to eat that pests in the soil decrease.

Is it possible to salvage any of the plants and freeze the veg?