Plum pest control

Plum is susceptible to various fungal and viral diseases, but insect pests bring the greatest harm to the crop. They can lay eggs all over the crown of the plum. Gluttonous insect larvae emerge from the eggs. They attack the young ovary of the plum, its green and ripe fruits.

Fruit sawfly

The greatest harm to the crop is caused by the fruit sawfly. This insect gets its name from the fact that it saws through the green fruit with its sharp jaws to lay eggs. On a fruit with a clutch of sawfly eggs, characteristic holes remain, similar to the cuts from the saw teeth. When the plum is fully ripe, the fruit sawfly larvae appear. First, these small worms eat the seed of the fruit, and then eat the fruiting body of the plum. From the fruit, only the peel with black spots and the stalk remain.

When the "mother" of the larvae is eaten, they spread over the entire crown of the tree and eat away all other plums. One fruit sawfly larva can kill up to six fruits per day. The fruit sawfly is dangerous because it can lay up to 90 eggs in one green fruit. If you do not fight this pest insect, then you can completely lose the entire plum crop.

Plum processing from a fruit sawfly

You can get rid of the fruit sawfly even during flowering. plums... This pest begins to fly to the tree at the pink bud stage. The insect crawls into a barely opened bud and leaves its pheromones there in order to lay a clutch during the formation of the ovary.

It is during the flowering period that the plum is treated with insecticides to get rid of this pest. Quick-acting preparations are used, since the period when the sawfly applies his pheromones to flowers lasts only a week.

An adult sawfly dies from the action of insecticides sprayed on the bud in about three days, so it is necessary to use fast-acting insecticides mixed with so-called "sticky preparations", for example "30B".

If you are treating a plum during flowering, one insecticide treatment will be sufficient. If the larvae have already hatched from the fruits, you will need to pick the affected plums as early as possible, otherwise you will lose the entire crop. Still green fruits are picked. If you look at the affected plums well, you can see black specks and brown shallow cuts on them, similar to the cuts from the teeth of a saw.