To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] curculio enemies?
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 08:44:41 -0500
I spread sheets under our big Japanese plum and tried tapping and shaking
several times over 2 sunny hot days, and got a total of 11 curculio. I am
baffled. This is the 3rd mild spring in a row, (it's almost enough to fool
the innocent into planting fruit trees), and I would think the curculio
population would be huge. I can remember shaking down 120 of them one year
in a 2 day period. Why so few? It's plenty hot enough for them to come
out of the ground. If curculio have natural enemies, it would take several
years of steady prey population to let them build up. Or is it the dry
weather? I know that Jap beetles will stay in the ground in dry weather
waiting for rain. Maybe what the curculio are waiting for is a rainy spell
that will prevent me from spraying with Surround. They are luring me into
thinking I don't need to spray, knowing that the stuff will actually stay on
as long as the weather is dry. They are so diabolical.... Any comments?
I suppose you all in real fruit country see steady curculio populations year
after year, plenty to destroy entire crops on unsprayed trees, right?
Donna