2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The garden mollusk actively damages the roots of fruit, berry and some field crops. The main harm to plants is caused by gluttonous larvae, since adult mosquitoes feed mainly on the nectar of flowering crops (mainly fruit and umbrella crops). Most often, you can meet garden tolstopods in the European part of Russia, as well as in the Caucasus and the Urals. If you do not declare war on these pests, then they will certainly destroy a rather impressive part of the crop
Meet the pest
The garden moth is a harmful mosquito up to one centimeter in size. These stocky insects are endowed with well-developed eyes, short beaded antennae and rather thick legs. Males differ from females not only in color, but also in a number of other characteristics. The male body is always black, and their abdomens are completely or partially covered with short white hairs. The yellowish front edges of their wings are equipped with small brownish eyes, and the remaining parts of the surface of the wing and hind veins are usually
colorless. As for the females, their abdomens and mesoskeums are characterized by a reddish color, and whitish-brownish hairs can be seen on the scutes and on the mesoskeums of the pests. The front edges of the wings of the females are brown, and the eyes are darker in color. The rest of the wing surface, including the hind veins, is yellowish, and the wing tips are most often whitish.
The eggs laid by the garden tolstopods have a characteristic yellowish-whitish color. Malignant larvae are endowed with superbly developed and non-retractable head capsules. The spiracles of each individual are located not only on the eight abdominal segments, but also on the front and rear breasts. The body of the larvae is worm-like, somewhat elongated, with slightly tapering front ends and endowed with many rather fleshy outgrowths. All of them are rather large in size - pest larvae can grow up to one and a half centimeters in length. Each larva is gray in color and has powerful jaws. And the pupae of garden puffy legs are conveniently located in puparia (hardened straggling molts).
During the mass summer, adult mosquitoes begin to swarm actively at a level of two to three meters above the soil surface, and then the mating females lay eggs - each clutch can number up to two hundred eggs. Egg development takes place in the soil and takes about fifty days.
The hatched larvae inhabit meadows and fields, concentrating mainly in the soil rich in decaying plant matter. They especially love the soil fertilized with horse manure. Younger larvae intensively feed on decomposition products, and older individuals make their way to the roots of growing crops. All larvae live in rather large colonies, and each of them is the offspring of a single female. The larvae that have eaten enough go to winter, and with the onset of spring they wake up and begin to actively eat the roots of garden crops. And harmful parasites pupate only by the end of April. Pupae develop in the soil for one to two weeks, and approximately at the beginning of May one can already observe the emergence of adults.
How to fight
Timely control of weeds and prompt removal of all post-harvest residues from the beds are the most effective preventive measures against garden thickeners. And in the fall, you should dig up the soil in the beds. Also, in order to curb the development of these nondescript parasites, the use of potassium cyanamide is allowed.
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