North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lee Reich <garden@leereich.com>]

How bad is the damage from the psylla if you do nothing? Do you still get a good crop of fruit? Plants can tolerate a certain amount of pest damage, compensating for some loss of foliage by increased photosynthetic efficiency of the remaining, healthy foliage.

Lee Reich, PhD

garden@leereich.com 

Books by Lee Reich:

The Pruning Book

Weedless Gardening

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden

A Northeast Gardener's Year

On Jun 5, 2007, at 3:38 PM, Scott Smith wrote:

I have been fighting the persimmon psylla for five years now.  It  

took me a couple years to even figure out what it is since it is  

uncommon, then a couple more to figure out how to control it to any  

degree.  At this point I can generally keep it in check but it  

requires more work than I would like to spend on it.  The main  

problem is the psylla curls up the edges of the leaves and creates a  

little cocoon in which sprays do not reach.

I am generally an organic grower which mostly limits myself to oil  

and soap and the like.  Here is what I have tried that works: soap  

and oil sprays both work, but for the curled leaves you need to  

manually uncurl them with one hand as you spray with the other hand.   

Another thing I have done is at the same time as a spray to tip all  

of the new shoots, which is where the psylla like to lay eggs the  

most and where it is hard to spray thoroughly.  It also gives the  

flies no good egg-laying spots for awhile.  I also remove the edges  

of infected larger leaves.   If a leaf is badly damaged I may remove  

the whole leaf.  This is faster than trying to unfurl and spray it.    

And occasionally I get desperate and spray malathion, no more than  

once per season.  Lately I have been experimenting with Surround  

which is known to work on pear psylla so I thought  it may also do  

something on persimmon psylla.  It does seem to have some effect, but  

the new shoots grow very rapidly and so very frequent sprays are  

required to keep them covered.  Also the flies seem to have a knack  

for finding the one little spot that was missed with the spray and to  

put the eggs there.  I plan on continuing my experiments with  

Surround since it may have some promise.

Has anyone found a good, permanent, preferably organic treatment for  

this pest?  I am surprised how little I read about it yet how  

difficult it is for me to control.

Scott

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