Summer Garden Pests - How To Protect The Crop? Fruit Moth, Weevils, Raspberry Beetle. Photo

2023 Author: Ava Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 07:13

July market in a small Kuban town. There is so much on the shelves! There are also cherries, sweet cherries, strawberries and apricots, there are already apples, peaches, nectarines, cherry plums … Sellers cheerfully invite customers: “Take it! I have no "meat!" Well, of course, customers won't buy wormy apples. And no one needs damaged plums either. Therefore, to preserve the beautiful appearance and integrity of the fruits, at least a dozen treatments of fruit trees from diseases and pests have already been carried out until July. Without this, it is practically impossible to obtain pure fruits in the Kuban in an industrial version: pests do not freeze out. Moreover, new ones often appear, the marble bug has now been added. In general, just have time to brush it off. This article will be about what measures to take to save the fruits.

Content:

• What could be the measures to protect the crop?
• Who are we fighting with now?
• Prevention

What could be the measures to protect the crop?

Every gardener must also be an "intriguer", a kind of Cesare Borgia, effectively using the enmity of species, attractive baits, deceiving moves, and, in extreme cases, deadly poisons. But be careful not to become a victim of poisoning yourself, like Cesare. That is, the measures must be comprehensive and safe for the gardener himself.

Consolidation with predators. Pests should never feel safe! Various birds, predatory beetles, predatory bugs, spiders, equestrians, lizards, including legless ones - these are all helpers in the difficult task of exterminating pests at all stages, from eggs to imago.

Disorientation. Most pests are guided by smell. Monoplants, free from weeds, themselves invite pests to a feast. But the abundance of different odorous plants introduces them into a stupor. Onions, garlic, dill, basil, marigolds growing around the currants create such a cacophony of odors that the pests lose their orientation, and while they are looking for a forage plant, you look, someone will eat them.

Bait. A very effective method, including the use of both containers with beer, fermented compote, light traps, and the use of pheromone drugs. They are designed to attract pests to traps and destroy there. Option: bait plants, for example, thistle or thistle, to which aphids will gladly move. You can immediately destroy both the weed and the pest.

Shelters and obstacles. Phytoprotective nets are quite capable of protecting berry bushes and even small trees from the attack of most pests, nets from birds will not allow birds to feast on ripe berries. The traps on the trunks are designed to keep those who were hiding in the ground or fallen from a branch out of the tree.

Intimidation. This is spraying with "liquid smoke". The smell of smoke is a powerful signal to all living things to run and hide. You can use both the liquid smoke itself and the Sochva preparation, this is the same thing. Such intimidation does not work on laid eggs and pupae.

Scare away. Birds are scared away from the harvest by scarecrows, as well as shiny and rustling objects, spinners, and insects by strong odors unpleasant for them, for example, infusion of tomato tops, tobacco, wormwood. Or by planting in the near-stem circle of pyrethrum, which is quite attractive for the gardener, but hated by the moth.

Melee. Mechanical methods of struggle. Rarely used, but effective method. In the garden, as a rule - shaking off pests on a previously spread fabric, followed by their destruction. Or washing away aphids with a strong jet of water. Hand picking of pests also applies here.

Poisoning. Most often, insect pests (and at the same time those not involved in them) are poisoned to death with a variety of drugs, from infusion of red pepper and ammonia to pesticides. But this is an extreme case, pointing to previous flaws.

The fight becomes successful when a variety of methods are constantly applied, according to the situation.

Who are we fighting with now?

Pests of the garden are constant and familiar, for example, aphids and moths, with which gardeners fight every year with varying degrees of success. There are rare, but inflicting completely unimaginable damage, for example, the gypsy moth, which eats cleanly most deciduous trees - here no measures taken in the garden help.

However, locusts and silkworms are force majeure, a kind of natural disaster, after which only the consequences are eliminated. Therefore, in a private garden it makes sense to "intrigue" primarily against local, habitual pests.

Fruit moth

The most obvious pests of fruits are moths: apple, pear, plum. Caterpillars, which overwintered safely and pupated in the spring, turned into butterflies and will now lay their eggs on leaves and fruits all summer. New caterpillars will hatch from these eggs, which will spoil the harvest. Moreover, these gluttonous creatures cannot be satisfied with one fruit in any way: having reached the seeds and having eaten "from the belly", together with the apple (pear, plum) they fall from the tree, get out and crawl upward for a new portion.

Thus, there are several ways of fighting possible at this stage:

• Shaking off so that the damaged fruits fall and the caterpillars cannot simply crawl along the branch from fruit to fruit. Collect fruits and compost.
• An obstacle is a "skirt" on the trunk, which will not let the larvae go up to continue the "banquet".
• Disorientation - to throw the tomato stepchildren near the trunk, the apple tree stops smelling like an apple tree, there is a strong smell of tomato tops around, the caterpillars are in a stupor.

For the older generation, that is, butterflies that will mate at night and lay their eggs, there are ways to turn the process in the direction the gardener needs - bait. The containers with fermented compote, hung in the crown, attract many individuals more than the mating process, and the butterflies, drunk, drown. Light attracts all moths, so if you put a solar-powered lamp in a bowl of soapy water, by the morning you will find a lot of drowned people there. Unfortunately, not only harmful, but also useful.

Pheromone baits attract males very well, preventing them from mating with females. The disadvantage of such traps is a large radius of action, that is, all the neighboring moths will fly here.

Raspberry beetle

Another very unpleasant pest that all gardeners face is the raspberry beetle. And he loves raspberries! So much so that he only recognizes her. That is, in the spring, after coming out of hibernation, he eats all the greens in a row, does not pick and choose from hunger. But he feeds his children exclusively on raspberries. Females lay eggs one by one in flowers in such a way that by the time the larva emerges, an ovary is already formed, and it will have something to eat off.

In this case, a set of measures is also needed, starting with a simple one - shaking off on a newspaper or cardboard. It is better to shake off raspberries in the morning and evening, when the beetles are inactive and it is easier to catch and destroy them. You can smear the cardboard with something sticky, then no one will surely run away. A phytoprotective mesh or thin non-woven material is good as obstacles, and tobacco dust, wormwood or marigold greens scattered under the bushes are suitable for scaring off.

Weevils

The same measures are good against the strawberry-raspberry weevil, which at this time has already moved from strawberry to raspberry.

The cherry has its own cherry weevil, as well as a cherry fly that spoils the fruit. For catching these pests, bait is good: for a fly - with a sweet liquid in a yellow container (here they are aesthetes!), For weevils with a design, it can be simpler, but something fermented is better.

Intimidation is also quite effective: spraying a 1 in 10 diluted liquid smoke encourages insects to hide. The fly will fly away to the neighbors, but the weevil will try to hide in the soil under the tree and here it can be lime by sprinkling the surface with ash. Ash for cherries will not be superfluous.

Prevention

Perhaps anticipation is one of the most important measures for ensuring future restful sleep without panic thoughts about the crop eaten by pests.

If insecticidal plants are planted beautifully and variedly in near-stem circles to scare away and disorient pests, their numbers can be significantly reduced: hibernating in the soil in which, for example, different types of perennial onions sit, pests will not go.

Feverfew and garlic are good for fighting apple, pear and plum moths. Bitter wormwood is just as good if it fits into the design.

Tagetes are unusually beautiful in color and at the same time with a peculiar scent. Planted in near-trunk circles, they will force the pests to leave for the winter to another place. And a long road is a high chance of being eaten or pecked. Tall species of tagetes, planted between currant bushes, will not allow female aphids to lay eggs on their shoots in autumn.

Different types of mint, sage, thyme, hyssop, monarda, lavender - all of them have a place in the tree trunks and in the raspberry bushes. After the autumn wilting, the stems are best cut off and left there. Smelling annuals are also useful - all kinds of basil, coriander, dill, perilla, celery.

By the way, perennials growing in tree trunks provide shelter for ground beetles, spiders - just those predators that help in the fight against fruit pests. Also, heaps of stones, a thick layer of mulch made from natural materials will be a refuge for these multi-eating and voracious creatures. Here they will settle for a long time.

In addition, you can attract wasps, predatory bugs, small predatory beetles by planting umbrella plants in different places, the nectar of which they will feed on. Moreover, it does not matter at all whether it will be decorative plants, food, medicinal or weeds. Ladybugs are equally tasty on wild carrots, and on coriander, and on a decorative cupyr, and on a flowering dream.

The pest population is well "thinned out" by eating larvae and adult insects of legless lizards and spindles. In our country, they live under a layer of grass mulch under bushes, it is humid, cozy and satisfying for them there - pests themselves come there in the hope of comfortably settling in for the winter.

But the use of poisons should be very thoughtful and targeted. It is better not to do this either during the flowering period or during the fruiting period. And even more so, not to water everything with poison "just in case", as a rule, innocent and innocent people suffer from this.

When there are a lot of pests, it is better to treat tree crowns with insecticides in early autumn, reducing the number of individuals that will go into hibernation, or in the spring, when they come out of there. Beforehand, of course, inquire about the modes of pest vulnerability for your area.