{"id":3408,"date":"2019-05-23T05:14:29","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T05:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/?p=3408"},"modified":"2020-02-17T16:20:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T16:20:10","slug":"apple-trees-codling-moths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/?p=3408","title":{"rendered":"Apple Trees & Codling Moths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If caterpillars are eating your apples, they are almost certainly the larvae of the codling moth (Cydia pomonella). This is North America\u2019s most important insect pest of apples, both in commercial orchards and home garden trees, which can be maintain with the use of a tree removal service<\/a> to get rid of the rotten trees . My garden includes four dwarf apple trees, so I have codling moth concerns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Damage to apples by Codling Moth larvae <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This pest can be difficult to eliminate completely in the home orchard, but it can be controlled to the point that the gardener will have plenty of fruit while sharing a small percentage with these vexatious invaders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent recommendation in \u201cThings to Do This Week\u201d was to\nspray apple trees with carbaryl (sold as Sevin) a broad-spectrum insecticide. Correct\nuse of this product requires careful timing, using a maximum-minimum thermometer\nand a degree-day chart, as noted by the University of California\u2019s Integrated\nPest Management Program (ipm.ucanr.edu). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This product is quite effective by over-stimulating the\nnervous systems of insects, resulting in the inability to contract breathing\nmuscles and ultimately causing death.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carbaryl is also effective in killing honeybees and other\nbeneficial insects and quite toxic for people. The National Pesticide\nInformation Center (npic.orst.edu<\/a>) reports that brief exposure while spraying can cause weakness, dizziness, and sweating. Additional reports have\nincluded pinpoint pupils, lack of coordination, muscle twitching, and slurred\nspeech. People could also experience headaches, nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps,\ndiarrhea, or drooling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greater\nexposure can cause high blood pressure, decreased muscle tone, and seizures.\nOther serious signs include difficulty breathing, constriction of the airways,\nmucous production, fluid buildup in the lungs, and reduced heart and lung\nfunction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given\nthese problems, I looked into non-chemical management of codling moths. As one\nmight expect, this involves knowing the pest\u2019s life cycle. The adult moth\nemerges right around now, mid-march to early April, is active for only a few\nhours before and after sunset, and mates when sunset temperatures exceed 62\ndegrees F. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfemale deposits eggs on apple leaves or fruit. When the eggs hatch, the larvae\nbore into the fruit, causing the damage we don’t like to see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After\nthe larvae mature, they drop from the tree, sometimes still in apples.  They continue their life cycle by pupating in\nthe soil or debris under the tree, or in bark crevices until they emerge as\nadult moths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nfirst step in non-chemical management of this pest is sanitation, which\ninvolves removing and destroying any fruit that the larvae have entered.\nThinning the infested fruit in this way also helps the remaining fruit to\ndevelop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanitation\ncontinues during May and June by removing any dropped fruit from the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nnext good management action is to bag the fruit when it is one-half to one-inch\nin diameter, using No. 2 lunch bags. The bagging method can be very effective, even\nwhen limited to the number of apples the gardener wishes to protect. The bags\ncan be opened a week or two before harvest to allow color development, at some\nrisk of late arriving larvae. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nrelatively new insecticide called CYD-X has been found to be both effective and\nsafe to use in the garden. This product is a naturally occurring granulosis virus\nthat infects and kills the larvae of the codling moth. It is highly specific to\nthe codling moth and is non-infectious toward beneficial insects, fish,\nwildlife, livestock or humans. The National Organic Program has listed CYD-X\nfor use in organic orchards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spray application of this product must occur during the day\nor two after the codling moth larvae have hatched and before they penetrate\nfruit. This time period occurs from late May to mid-June. Precise timing\nrequires the use of a degree-day model, which regretfully requires more\nexplanation than this column can accommodate. For the home gardener, weekly\napplications during egg hatch throughout the season will be quite effective. Adding\n1% horticultural oil to the application can improve effectiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nlarva must ingest the product to become infected with the virus. The product is\nextremely virulent, so it is effective at very low use rates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another safe and effective insecticide is Spinosad, a\nbiological product made from a naturally occurring bacterium. It is a\nlower-toxicity material that is safe for most beneficial insects as well as for\npeople, pets, and the environment although it is more toxic to beneficial\ninsects than granulosis virus. Repeated applications during egg hatch for each\ngeneration are necessary for acceptable control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\navailability of non-chemical controls of codling moths enables gardeners to\nkeep highly toxic chemicals out of their gardens and still enjoy pest-free\napples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organic gardening is its own reward. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If caterpillars are eating your apples, they are almost certainly the larvae of the codling moth (Cydia pomonella). This is North America\u2019s most important insect pest of apples, both in commercial orchards and home garden trees, which can be maintain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[204,210],"tags":[208,29],"class_list":["post-3408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-2019-2","category-winter-2019","tag-edibles","tag-pests"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2WCVL-SY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3408"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3537,"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions\/3537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}