North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Diane Whitehead <voltaire@islandnet.com>]

On 31-May-08, Ginda Fisher wrote:

>  I had very poor fruit set as a %
> of bloom, probably some combination of the effect of winter moths,
> which damage the fruiting parts well before the buds open, and the
> sprays for winter moths, which probably took out some of my
> pollinators.*


I can remember some of my apples didn't start bearing for about 12  
years - almost as bad as seedlings.

In the 1970s we had several years of winter moth which had been  
inadvertently imported from Nova Scotia, on the Atlantic coast of   
Canada.  Every deciduous tree would start to leaf out and then be  
completely stripped.  The air was full of little caterpillars on long  
long silk threads, swinging out on a search for a tree still with  
leaves.  The frass dropping sounded like rain falling.  Of course, we  
got no fruit at all as the flower buds were eaten out before they  
opened.  My opinion of earwigs and birds changed -  I saw earwigs  
carrying the caterpillars down the apple trunks, but I never noticed  
birds eating any.

We used tanglefoot to prevent the females from climbing up the trunks  
to lay eggs, since they can't fly.  This may have helped a little, but  
what really changed our landscape back to green was the importation in  
1979, '80 and '81 of some natural predator of the winter moth.  By  
1985 their population had crashed. It was so great to have fruit  
again. I suppose we still have some winter moths but they aren't  
noticeable enough for me to do anything to prevent them.

Diane Whitehead
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
maritime zone 8, cool Mediterranean climate
mild rainy winters, mild dry summers