I quote a comment made by Matron in an earlier post:
"Matron said...
I hang up a pheromone lure in my plum tree in Spring. Seems to work well, the maggoty-plum ratio was only about 1 in 20 this year."
Like an idiot I said:
"We haven't really suffered from maggoty plums"
Well I spoke too soon as tonight I found a small pink maggot in the centre of one of our plums. It was a lively little thing which is why the photo is a bit blurry. Thankfully I always cut them in half so at least I didn't find half a pink maggot in a plum!
I guess this is the larva of the plum moth so it looks as though we will need to invest in plum moth lures as well as codling moth lures. Our plot will become very alluring! Goodness knows what else we will have to lure away from our fruit - I suppose the next thing will be raspberry beetle!
Gardening Naturally have a page that is devoted to entrapment so I guess the plum moth trap is what I need now! I have only found one pink maggot so far so is it too early to panic?
If Matron is around is that what you have used?
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Usually we have a lot of maggots in our plums, every 4th or 5th has one. But this year there was one in 50 plums that had maggot in there.
ReplyDeleteI think it's because we had a lot of ladybird larvae and ladybirds around our fruit trees in spring.
I hope that will be the only maggoty plum you will find.
We've never had maggots in our plums and yet I also found one this year...Just the one so far though and even then it hadn't done much damage....maybe it's a good year for the plum moth that I never even knew existed?!?!?! I will let you know if I find any more!
ReplyDeleteHi Vrtlarica - this is a first for me and we have had plum trees for ages - well I hope it is a first and that I haven't been eating them! I hope our goldfinch brigade have been finding some to eat!
ReplyDeleteHello Tanya - the tell tale sign seemed to be that the stone area was a bit blackened from its waste! I've had other plums that looked a bit crumbly round the stone but assumed it was just that the plum was going bad - maybe these had maggots that had left!
Urghhh. There's always a pest about to spoil our enjoyment.
ReplyDeleteVery true Jo and some have only two legs!!!
ReplyDeletethat looks like the same one I used. I did, however, look closely on the packet and it seems to be an 'indicator' to the right time to spray your tree rather than a trap to trap them all. The grid squares marked out on my sticky trap are supposed to enable you to count them. When the weekly count rises to a certain number, that is the right time to spray. I prefer not to spray and the trap seems to catch quite a few and I;m happy with that.
ReplyDeleteHi Matron thanks for the response - I think it's the same idea with most of the lures but like you we are just content to trap some of the baddies. Even if we did spray the trees are too large to be able to spray effectively.
ReplyDeleteAnd you probably don't want to eat the plums after they have been sprayed with something toxic (and poison the goldfinch as well as yourselves?)
ReplyDeleteWould it work to hang more than one lure per tree?
No BW no spraying - certainly don't want to do anything to harm the goldfinches. We haven't too many grubs so far but are going to cut up the plums in a minute so things may change. Maybe just one lure to start with next year
ReplyDeleteFantastic grapevine, I have a 3-4 year old vine going in my plot next year. Hope to get some bunches like that if I am lucky!!! :)
ReplyDeleteHope your vine is productive - what sort is it?
ReplyDelete