2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Plum is grown everywhere, loved by all gardeners. It is distinguished by its annual yield and good winter hardiness. In order for them to remain at a high level, it is necessary to protect the plants from pests
Varieties of silkworm
There may be 2 types of silkworms on the plum:
• ringed;
• unpaired.
Caterpillars of future butterflies are nocturnal, causing great damage to plants. How to reduce the harmfulness of insects?
Ringed silkworm
A brownish-yellowish butterfly with a dark brown transverse stripe in the middle of the upper wings, with a span of up to 4 cm. The lower wings are lighter.
The caterpillar is about 5.5 cm in size, bluish-grayish with white, yellow, black stripes. Its body is covered with sparse velvety bristly hairs.
A fully formed embryo hibernates inside the egg. It gives one generation per season. During the period of leaf blooming, caterpillars hatch, feeding on the buds in the evening, night hours, then moving to the buds, flowers, eating leaf plates.
They live in communities, making web nests in the forks of branches. Adult larvae crawl over the plant, lead a solitary lifestyle.
In June, after the plum blossom, a cocoon is made, braiding several leaves with cobwebs. Pupa dark brown with sparse red hairs. In the middle of summer, butterflies emerge from them, laying eggs on young shoots that leave for wintering. Oviposition resembles a ring in appearance. Hence the name of the insect.
Unpaired silkworm
A large butterfly with light whitish-yellow edges, black zigzag stripes, spots with a wingspan of 7, 5 cm. The abdomen is thickened with thick brown-yellow hairs at the end.
Caterpillars of older generations are gray, 7.5 cm long. Covered with bunches of bristly hairs. On the back there are 3 longitudinal yellowish stripes, on each segment there are two large blue, red warts.
Pupa dark brown with tufts of sparse reddish hairs. In the egg phase, it hibernates. The clutches are located on the bark of the lower part of the trunk in large heaps, covered by a caring female with a yellowish-brown down from the abdomen.
During the budding period, caterpillars emerge from them, damaging all parts of the plant. Due to body hairs, they are easily picked up by air currents, carried around the garden, populating new places.
At the end of June they pupate under the bark or in leaf plates entangled in cobwebs. Egg-laying butterflies appear in mid-summer.
Silkworm control measures:
1. Shoots with egg clutches are cut in autumn, tied in bunches, stored suspended under a canopy. In the spring, caterpillars die of hunger. The branches are freed from the cobweb, carried out into the garden for the departure of a useful predator - the telenomus. It infects fresh silkworm eggs.
2. Collection by hand, destruction of caterpillars.
3. Spraying the plum before flowering with infusions of larkspur, tobacco, wormwood, hellebore.
4. Application of the drug karbofos or biological - enterobacterin, dendrobacillin.
5. The telenomus is released for planting.
Plum moth
The forewings of an adult are grayish-brown and have a span of up to 17 mm. Caterpillars with a dark head, a slightly pinkish body, a shield at the back of the head 16 mm. They hibernate in silky warm cocoons on their trunks under exfoliation of the bark.
Adults appear during the period of ovary formation, laying single eggs in fruits or leaf plates. The caterpillars that appear gnaw through the juicy flesh, making passages to the center, without affecting the hard part.
Damaged berries rot and fall off. Larvae of older instars leave fruit, leaving for wintering. In the Middle Lane, they give 1 generation per year, in the southern regions they manage to go through the entire cycle twice.
Control measures:
1. Remove plant residues.
2. Clean the bark from pupae.
3. Collect the carrion daily.
4. In the crown of plums, bait with a fermenting mixture is hung in jars to attract and destroy butterflies.
5. Trichogramma is released on landings of a natural predator.
6. With a large appearance of caterpillars, they are treated with infusions of tops of tomatoes, hellebore, tansy, elderberry.
7. Twice per season: at the beginning of the appearance of larvae, 10 days after the first treatment, they are sprayed with solutions of Ditox, Actellic or biological - Acarin, Lepidocid.
We will get acquainted with weevils, scale insects in the next article.
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