White-fly

Talk on the allotments tonight was of white-fly pests sucking the life out of cabbages and sprouts. So far my brassicas do not appear to have been attacked but several of my neighbours have suffered something of a brassica massacre. I have taken the precaution of consulting Oracle Titchmarsh. Helpfully, he suggests controlling whitefly biologically with the use of a chalcid wasp.

I quite like the idea of having a pet killer wasp which I can perhaps keep in a little box in the greenhouse and let it out a couple of times each day to dine on whitefly. I don't know how I would get it back in the box. Maybe I could train it with sheepdog trial style commands such as "come by" and "get down Shep".

I have searched for Chalcid wasps on ebay. The only ones I can find appear to be pre-historic specimens which have been entombed in amber for thousands of years. A few of these placed at strategic points around the plot may be sufficient to deter the white-fly, but I doubt it.