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The safety rocket cupboard

Updated: May 10, 2022

Rocket is one of those great plants which be grown and harvested year round, but be careful of the destructive tiny green caterpillars. Our sad plant loss scenario of 2021 was not to be repeated in 2022, so we made a plan!


An abundance of wildlife is always welcomed in the garden, but the pests can cause a few issues. Keeping in mind a few pests are necessary to feed the beneficial insects that we are trying to attract. Although there is a tipping point when a little annoyance turns to high level frustration, especially when the pests are in such large numbers its hard to control and when they are eating your food quicker than you can.

As we avoid using chemicals or pesticides in our garden, it's expected that we would learn as we go, especially when it comes to tackling different pests on different plants. The goal with all pest management is to understand the life cycle and interrupt it before the pest becomes an infestation.


Observation is a most important skill in the garden, preventing an infestation is all about observing when there are a couple caterpillars present, try to identify the species, research what the eggs look like and seek to solve.


🌱 Handy tip:

Pick a few leaves from each plant along the row. If you take lots of leaves from just one plant, you’ll weaken the growth.


As we love adding rocket to our daily salads, we had planned for several planters and pots of rocket around the garden, it was a great pleasure to watch them grow and pick the fresh spicy green leaves everyday.

BUT THEN, this became almost impossible when competing with a plant covered in small caterpillars which grew very quickly and were on the hunt for food to eat. We realised that the rocket plants were a favourite of these little green monsters, as in hte video here, you can see how quick their tiny mouths move along munching the leaves.


Very quickly were our rocket plants munched and there was much left for us to eat, this was a daily struggle to keep on top of manually removing the pests, but there always seemed to be too many!

Burned by this sad memory of losing all my rocket plants, I made a plan, that this would not happen in 2022. So we came up with a plan - to add a rocket cupboard to our space! We found this really handy 3 tiered timber cupboard/mini greenhouse online, which we set up on bricks so we could use the space underneath for storage. The top is a very easy lift up roof with a simple plastic cover, with the 2 doors having a simple latch to keep them closed.


All of my rocket is now growing in the cupboard, from which we can cut from daily for our salads. The aim of this plan was ensure that the rocket plants are completed covered, this way the butterflies have no access to them to lay eggs, and hoping we won't have another sad situation of all the caterpillars eating our plants again!


Unfortunately in one of the strong wind storms we get here the roof became detached as there was not way of fixing it down, so one day it broke off in the strong winds. This actually turned out to be a good thing, because the rocket on the top shelf was growing higher the roof line of the unit. We gathered a few timber pieces and strong netting mesh, a few screws and hooks and created an extension to the top of the timber unit.


We think this top extension works best for the unit as it allows more airflow into the bottom shelves and when it rains the pots are able to receive a good watering.

Thanks for reading, if this interested you make sure to share with others who are growing vegetables from home, and would love to know your experiences, tips and stories too 🌱

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