2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The onion moth is found almost everywhere. A favorite treat of this pest is onion and garlic, but it can sometimes damage other plants belonging to the onion family. The onion moth is especially harmful to lagging and weak crops. Damaged leaves begin to turn yellow, dry quickly and subsequently die off. Of course, this cannot but affect the onion yield, which is noticeably declining
Meet the pest
The onion moth is a relatively small butterfly with wingspan ranging from 13 to 16 mm. Its front gray or dark brown wings are set off by a contrasting white pattern, and in front of the middle of the rear edges of these wings there are pronounced wedge-shaped light spots. The hind wings of the onion moth, equipped with a rather long border, are monochromatic and painted gray.
The oval eggs laid by these parasites have a milky hue and reach a length of 0.4 mm. The size of the caterpillars of the last instar is about 10 - 11 mm. All caterpillars are colored yellowish-greenish and dotted with small hairs and brownish warts. And the length of dark brown, fusiform and rather slender pupae reaches 7 mm. These pupae are formed in grayish and rather loose cocoons intertwined by caterpillars.
Pupae hibernate mainly under plant debris, and sometimes butterflies, whose summer starts in April or May, can also hibernate under them. They are especially active at night. A little later, on the flower arrows, the necks of the bulbs, as well as on the outer sides of the leaves, the female begins to lay eggs (one at a time). Their total fertility reaches an average of 50 - 75 eggs, of which caterpillars hatch after five to seven days.
The hatched caterpillars make their way to the inner sides of the arrows or tubular leaves, making winding and rather narrow passages in the pulp of the leaves. Then they begin to eat away the tissue in the form of many irregular stripes. In this case, the outer skin remains intact. Also, these parasites eat the rudiments of flowers in numerous inflorescences and gnaw the pedicels during flowering, as a result of which the seeds often die. The duration of feeding of harmful caterpillars is on average twelve to sixteen days.
Pest pupation occurs in net cocoons on onion leaves or on weeds located near onion plantings. 9 - 19 days later, you can observe the emergence of butterflies of the next generation. Two or three generations of onion moths develop on the territory of Russia per year. In hot and dry weather, these parasites reproduce best.
How to fight
Planting onions is preferable early. Compliance with crop rotation, top dressing with high-quality fertilizers and regular weed control are equally important. And if you combine onion planting with carrot, then the carrot smell will scare off the voracious onion moth.
Post-harvest residues must be destroyed, as well as periodically loosening and deep autumn plowing of the soil.
A good effect is given by dusting the soil with tobacco dust and ash mixed in equal proportions. And you can spray onion plantings with infusions of red capsicum or garlic. It is very useful to mulch onion crops with peat or rotted manure, as well as finely chopped pine or spruce branches. The onion moth really does not like loose soil.
To speed up the growth of the bulbs, at the end of May, this culture is fed with urea - only one tablespoon of it is needed for ten liters of water. And for one square meter of plantings, three liters of this solution are consumed.
If there are two or more caterpillars per plant, you will have to move on to spraying with insecticides. Such treatments give the best effect at the initial stage of caterpillar revival. A drug called "Iskra" has proven itself well, one tablet of which is diluted in ten liters of water. One liter of this solution is usually enough for ten square meters of onion plantings.
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