Monday was another nice summer’s day with the temperature once again into the mid twenties centigrade.
I now know what is causing the problem with our Oullins gage plums. The tree is infested with plum moth maggots. Today I picked a few fruits that looked like they might be starting to ripen but still had someway to go.
Not a particularly attractive looking collection of plums and I had a sort of an idea what I might find inside one or all of these plums. There was no way I was going to bite into one without a careful inspection inside first.
This is the culprit the maggot of the plum moth. I cut into four plums and each one had one of these pink coloured maggots inside. They are about 10mm long with a dark brown head.
It’s now a question of throwing all the available controls at our plum trees as its likely that they will all be infested. The trees will get a pruning first of all to bring them back to a more manageable size. In winter they will get sprayed with a winter wash and in spring pheromone traps will be hung in the trees to attract the male plum moths who then get stuck in the trap. I’ll try and pick up as many of the fallen plums as possible and dispose of them away from the allotment. There are also suggestions that grease banding the tree maybe beneficial so I might give that a go as well.
Hopefully if I can get all these measures completed it will start to cut down the infestation year by year. I don’t think there’s a quick solution.
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Ugh, what a shame. I do hope you're able to cut the infestation right down for next year. Why is it always the horrible things that suddenly appear in huge numbers?!
ReplyDeleteWar on plum moths has been declared. Makes gardening entertaining doesn't it!
DeleteYuck. Sorry but I couldn't watch the video, creepy crawlies make me shudder. I've had a few plums off my little tree so far, the rest are still ripening, luckily I haven't found any little visitors yet, but I shall keep my eyes peeled now that I'm aware of these pests.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the RHS these maggots make the fruit ripen earlier than expected. Later fruit on the same tree might not be infested as much. Here's hoping.
DeleteI have something similar with my Crab Apple tree. Year after year it produces loads of fruit, but 90% of them are unuseable because of maggot infestation. Luckily I'm not too upset by this since I see the tree as being mostly an ornamental one, and I don't think the effort and expense of ridding it of the pest (possibly Codling Moth?) would be justifiable. I hope you manages to save at least some of the plums.
ReplyDeleteSeems a strange pest Mark. It makes infected plums ripen earlier. I picked a punnet today and so far all the plums have been maggot free. I don't expect my good fortune to last much longer. On the plot pheromone traps seem to work well with apples. I forgot to refill the trap with a new cartridge this year so I'm expecting plenty of apple damage too.
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