The History of the Moth-Blocker™
Or “ How my wife made me invent something in spite of my stupidity”
Hi. I’m John and my wife is Beth; hence B&J Garden Solutions! Don’t ask why she got first billing!
The important thing here is that we’ve been organic gardeners for over 30 years. In fact we have over 3,500 square feet of raised beds. So, being dedicated members of the “organic clan,” we certainly wouldn’t try to sell you something that we don’t use quite successfully ourselves.
Over the years we’ve planted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower repeatedly with varying success. It seemed that every time a crop looked good to us, it looked good to the cabbage moths too. I don’t need to tell you what it’s like to cut a broccoli side shoot, only to find there’s a bright green worm looking back at you. Yuck! We desperately needed some form of cabbage moth control. What we really, really wanted was some form of 100% cabbage moth prevention.
We tried row covers first. They blew off, so we weighted down the edges. Of course the first time we went out to weed, we had to remove the weights and pull back the row cover. You guessed it—out flew dozens of cabbage moths! We also found that during a hot spell, the plants were literally baked. All the leaves turned brown and died because cruciferous plants like cool conditions. Part of that problem was that the cloth blocked a good portion of the rainfall as well.
Next we tried Bt. We don’t like insecticides too much, even biological ones; but we had to try something new to prevent or at least control these pests. The Bt helped a bit at first. It seemed that we didn’t have quite so many cabbage moths as the last year, but there were still enough of the little buggers to ruin most of our cole crops. And of course as soon as it rained we had to go out and spray again right away or the moths would be back in force. And you can’t just stand there and spray Bt. Oh No! You have to bend down and lift each leaf of each plant to get the spray on the undersides of the leaves. Bt only works on contact with the insects and naturally they like to hide out on the bottom of the leaves where they can’t be seen.
At this point, the frustration was mounting at breakneck speed. Beth even considered giving up on cole crops altogether! Frankly, being a typical male, I wasn’t too upset about having less work to do in the garden, but I was sure going to miss those tender fresh Brussels sprouts every year. We were at our wits' end! What could be done about those @$?^# little pests?
Well, then about two years ago we had a brainstorm. We’re still arguing about who thought of it first (she did, but I’m not ready to admit it—remember, I’m a man!). We had used hardware cloth stretched out between metal fence posts as a support trellis for our pea rows. This stuff had about a two-inch spacing between the wires and worked just fine for this application. It was also galvanized and still looked good after eight years outside. She said to me (or I said to her) “I wonder if that pea row fencing stuff is made with smaller holes?” So we went shopping and after several days, we eventually found one roll at one store that had 1/8th inch spacing between the wires. We figured this would absolutely prevent the moths from getting to the plants. Well, we thought about making a sort of green house affair with the hardware cloth but that didn’t sound too practical and we only had one 50' roll of it. What to do? What to do?
One of us (I’m still not saying who) thought about enclosing each plant separately. As I stated before, I’m a man, so that meant I got the job of creating these cages. It also meant that function was much, much more important than form! After many injured fingers and some colorful language, I made a Frankenstein plant cage. But guess what? IT WORKED!!! Not a single cabbage moth was to be found!
The next year Beth decided she wanted more of these cages, including some taller ones for broccoli. “You know who” was assigned the job of making them. After much searching, I found some more of the obviously rare 1/8th inch cloth and made another 18 cages—my hands were scarred up for two months! On the one hand, my wife was delighted about the effectiveness of the cages. But on the other hand, she started complaining about having to lift them off to weed or harvest, and how difficult it was to get them back in place over a mature and hence larger plant. I’m fairly adept at ignoring her complaints (remember, I’m a man) so nothing else happened that year.
However, repeated wifely complaints do tend to get louder over time, and one of us (again I’m not saying who) decided to re-design “the amazing watch-a m’-call-it-thingy-that-actually-worked-to-protect-cole-crops-from-cabbage-moths.” We needed a removable lid that stayed in place outside in the wind and that couldn’t be dislodged by squirrels and such. We needed the ability to store the cages flat so they didn’t take up half of the floor space in the garage over the winter. In other words, this time, form had to be just as important as function. Once again, after many injured fingers and quite a lot of colorful language, Moth-Blocker™ was born.
Well, long story short, we realized that if it could be stored flat, it could be shipped flat. And if it worked for us, it would work for everyone else who had problems with the “dreaded cabbage moth.” So now we are offering the incredible, highly effective, quite durable and long lasting, easy to set-up, easy to store Moth-Blocker™ to you.
Part Two: “How to set up an online business for dummies” will have to wait for another day.
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