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  • From: Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>
  • To: NAFEx <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [nafex] Apple pest (part 2)
  • Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 00:11:55 -0400

OK, this was going to be my important question but I have it figured out. I had in the back of my mind that maybe the pest in question 1 was the same as this question 2. I couldn't see how, since there were 2 distinct types of damage.
My biggest apples are just bigger that the size of a nickle with some varieties still much smaller. I couldn't understand how I could have apparent coddling moth damage on so many tiny apples when I virtually never find them in mature apples. I also wondered why the entry hole wasn't at the calyx end.
Well, I don't have coddling moths, I have European apple sawfly. The reason for two types of damage is that they start right at petal fall and make a path on the surface of very young apples:
http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/orchardmon/pest_descriptions/pest_images/ph1-35c.JPG
Then they often travel to an adjacent apple before the first one drops and they make damage that looks about like this:
http://nysipm.cornell.edu/factsheets/treefruit/pests/eas/eas7.jpeg
That's not a really great picture but it's about the best I could find on the web. That one is linked from this article:
http://nysipm.cornell.edu/factsheets/treefruit/pests/eas/eas.asp#fig7

Today I was picking off infested apples and dropping them into buckets with some water in the bottom. I've been seeing this for many years but until now didn't figure out what it was. This year it's a big problem and it's too late to do anything about it, other than what I'm doing by picking the apples off. I only have 4 trees and none are really huge. There are a few upper branches I can't even reach with a ladder though. On major parts of some trees, there are far more infested apples than those that appear to be OK. They will be over thinned I'm afraid.

Lastly, it's going to be hard to spray at the perfect time next year. I have multiple varieties grafted on 3 of the 4 trees. I can't spray the early bloomers right at petal fall when the later blooming branches still have bees working the flowers. I'll keep drowning the infested apples as long as I still find larva inside and next year I'll do what I can with spray. That should knock them back down to low numbers.

Steve in the Adirondacks





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