I know of no way to kill caterpillars without using chemicals or killing other 'healthy' garden bugs. If there is, I hope someone will share their 'tip'.
This is what I found in a gardening book I have titled, "The Veggie Gardener's Answer Book" (100% Organic).
Insects that prey on caterpillars and grubs include yellow jackets, hornets, ground beetles, tachinid flies, and many true bugs.
That's all I have to offer. I wish my garden was in and growing!!! We have had a LATE, cold, wet spring.
Water
You didn't tell which caterpillars are eating which plants, but you ought to know that the often despised "ground ivy" (Glechoma hederacea)repels cabbage worms, cucumber worms and beetles, tomato horn worms, and others; and protects Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and relatives (squash, melons), broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower (maybe cabbage too, then, I'm thinking).
I found this chart the other day, just after I'd pulled out about one quarter of an amazingly prolific stand of the "weed" out where some tomatoes will be growing. I left the rest.
Ground ivy, also known by "creeping charlie," "jenny-jump-up" and many other names, is actually a better lawn plant then grass, because it's nearly impossible to get rid of anyhow, so why not encourage it and get rid of the useless grass? If you search it out online, you'll find several uses for salads and herbal medicine, dating back many centuries, if not millennia.It was used in beer making before hops became popular.
In my opinion, while it's not easy to rid your lawn of ground ivy, a garden bed is another story, since you can probably totally denude the soil if need be. But the stuff makes a nice living mulch, so again, why bother?
It's obviously easy to transplant and propagate. This stuff is found in most lawns, including yours, no doubt!
How lovely! I will look into it some more and see if ground ivy likes to live in Florida. I haven't seen any here that I'm aware of though...
I've heard that marigolds attract good bugs to eat the bad bugs. Mine are just seedlings right now though... Meanwhile the brocoli leaves look like lace.
I guess i will keep removing them by hand for now.
My thought was that maybe an internal vermicide would work the same for other types of wormy creatures.
--Pick off as many as you can find/see (and if you see any eggs, scrape those off too)
--Take a few heads of garlic and about 1/2 cup of HOT cayenne powder and put it in a pot with a gallon or two of water (blenderize the garlic first, no need to remove the skins), then bring it to a boil and strain it...and then spray all around the ground at the base of the plants, up the stalks and on the underside of the leaves.
--After that, wrap "sticky tape" around the base of the plant (sticky side out) - then any crawling along the ground will get stuck trying to crawl up to the leaves.
Broccoli plants are VERY hardy, and many times the caterpillars won't do enough harm to kill the plant...but sometimes they do :(
Let us know what you do and how it turns out. Luckily, we've never had any of those pesky caterpillars on our cabbages, broccoli or cauliflower (which may be because we've got tons of froggies out here on the farm, and froggies love to munch caterpillars). YAY FROGGIES!
So, two nights ago I was puting together the ingredients for the lower bowel balance and realized that the rasperry leaf needed extra chopping and I had already mixed it into the rest of the herbs. So little by little I chopped it up in the coffee grinder, which sent a few clouds of LBB dust up into the air that had my dad sneezing in the other room. Unfortunately, my mom got a whif too and her bladder, which is badly damaged, was sent into searing pain that she said she hasn't felt in years. She slept with ice packs on her bladder and took some kind of bladder pain killer (azo) which she only resorts to when it gets really bad. Anyways, I mention all of this to say that I don't think a garlic/cayenne spray for the plants that mom is gonna eat is gonna work unfortunately. But if it were mine alone I would have already done it.
Oh well. It's a great suggestion-- one that I will use when I've got my own garden.
And now we know that the LBB is not something that my mom could tollerate in the most miniscule amounts. I've stopped encouraging her to try cayenne.... But we are drinking lots of marshmalllow root and slippery elm.