>>543295Starting at the center of each plant, inspect each side or every leaf. do this slowly. Look for the eggs and caterpillars. The caterpillars can be wee tiny are rather larger. Here's pics of 3 types of the caterpillars and the 2nd from bottom pic is of an egg. Destroy everything you find. The "frass" (caterpillar shit) is in the bottom pic. Look for frass, it is a good way to instantly know if there's a caterpillar munching on your stuff. Just look above the frass somewhere for the caterpillar. Use row covers to prevent them and paper wasps can eat them. Parasitic wasps also attack the caterpillars. A hand mirror can help our searching. Once you are done, wash off any frass you find. That will help you locate new frass the next day.
Slugs/snails also make holes. Those come out at night and on overcast/rainy days. Just grab them and kill them. Their feces won't roll off the leaves like frass does. Instead it can be plastered to the bottom of a leaf. Look for slime trails too. Use DIY beer/slug traps (google) to reduce their numbers drastically.
It takes up to 8-9 days for eggs to hatch. That means, after you put on a row cover you will need to check your plants every day for about 1.5 weeks. You don't want caterpillars munching away, turning into adults, and breeding an orgy of death inside the row cover. Next time, place a row cover over the plants when you first place them.
