Thanks for the question. I am posting it because probably a lot of other people want to know, and that's how the HOS works.
One effective way to clean up the fruit is with chickens. They will joyously eat the maggots of the coddling moth and apple maggot in the ground, killing them before they can fly up and get into the fruit. Mulching wont' stop either one.
An extension pole can be used to prune the branches you' can't reach, or even to remove the fruit. I agree that now is a great time to start taking care of them. Kaolin coated footies work great, and so do ziplocs. I believe that kaolin clay coated footies are still available through the HOS website. Traps with molasses etc., help, as do big, fake apples coated with tanglefoot. When one takes care of coddling moth, Asian pears are very productive and rewarding trees to grow in the PNW.
Thanks<
John S
PDX OR
Dear John,
I saw your postings from the Home Orchard Society in 2010 about coddling
moths on Asian Pears in Portland. We moved to NE Portland last fall and
had a bumper crop of 2 large asian pear trees worth of 100% wormy fruit and
one Asian pear with no fruit. It was so sad to see most of the fruit
wasted. There were so many hits, it was hard to even find one piece worth
saving. The house had been vacant for 4 years, so the trees were allowed
to drop fruit and the worm population has really maxed out. It sounds like
you have had similar experience.
I cleaned up the fruit from the ground (altho maybe not soon enough) and
put down mulch. I pruned the trees at budding, but I read not to prune
more than 20% per year, plus we value the height for screening from
neighbors, and I couldn't reach everything, so I didn't take out as much as
I now think I should have.
This year it looks like all 3 trees have fruit and I'm getting ready to
either spray or bag as they are now at the 1/2 inch size recommended at the
Home and Garden show fruit tree seminar.
I am curious--What has worked for you since 2010? Do you have any
recommendations? I wrote to a guy who was selling the kaolin coated footies
and he said they are not available in the Portland area over the counter.
So I'm thinking I'll try baggies, although the trees are too tall for me to
reach all the fruit and I may resort to spraying. I bought a Solo backpack
sprayer. I've heard there are non-chem sprays--have you tried any?
I also watched extension videos on making the molasses and water or
molasses, vinegar and ammonia traps from an old plastic jug. Have you
tried these?
Thanks in advance if you take the time to reply. I hope your Asian pears
and mine do well this year.
Thanks John. I'll have to look into chickens.
Today, I started bagging each of my 3 Asian pear trees using ziplock baggies and breadsacks. I tried a variety of different ways of securing the larger bags over the branch ends. I have 3 different types of Asian pears and the 20th Century pear has its fruit along the branches in such a way that it made it very hard to do individual baggies, so I created tubes of some of the breadsacks and slid it up the branch then secured both ends. I snipped tiny holes in many of the larger sacks to allow ventilation and prevent them from overheating. Any bags that had leaves in them along with the fruit steamed up right away. we'll see how the snipping compares in terms of keeping out the moths. I realized after working several hours, that i am not going to be able to reach all the fruit, so will need some alternatives until I can get the trees pruned farther down in height next spring.
I also created traps (using a milk jug, a 1.5 liter bottle, and a quart takeout container) each with a 4x1 window cut in them. For the attractant, I combined two recipes I found online at youtube from a utah state extension agency and an organic source. I used
1/4 c each of grandma's molasses
1/4 c bragg's cloudy apple cider vinegar
stirred into 2 cups of warm water,
a spoonful of pear sauce
a spoonful of sourdough starter, since I didn't have any yeast as suggested by the extension video.
I heard they are attracted by red color, so I topped one trap with a red plastic cup, taped an apple green plastic cap to the second and covered the third with an orange and red lid.
Will try to remember to post about what works and what doesn't.
From what I understand the traps are mainly to learn when the moths are active, not as a primary means of controlling their population. Certainly with the pressure described in the message they won't make a dent by themselves.
If the trees are too tall to prune than they are probably too tall to spray with a backpack sprayer. For most sprays I believe you want to cover all surface area top and bottom to run-off.
I moved to a new property a year ago and have only seen it for a couple of seasons. There are a couple of apple trees that only had a few fruit. I found it very strange that there was not a single pest in the fruit. I spoke with the neighbors who have been there for years and they say they do not get codling moths. Hopefully I don't ruin it for everybody.
They have chickens, as do the neighbors between us. I haven't really seen apples or pears at the other neighbors house, mostly just cherries.
I'm wondering if maybe we are isolated enough from other hosts that we don't have a population. I hadn't really thought this was possible since the moths fly and apparently there are non pome fruit hosts that they can use.
So just a brief update is that my apple-green cup-topped trap (made of a 1 liter water bottle) is more full of coddling moths than the others. Surprisingly the green cap seemed to have more caught than the red capped ones. I guess if they are in an asian pear tree, they wouldn't be looking for red fruit? To spray, or keep bagging that is the question... With the baby birds and my granddaughter playing in the yard, it bugs me to think about spraying. Does the moths flying mean that they have laid their eggs on leaves and I still have some time before the worms migrate to the fruit? I inspected the fruit tonight and bagged some more. A handful had marks that could have been hits, but wasn't sure. I disposed of them anyway.
I have a question regarding the lifecycle of the coddling moth. So, if they go through their lifecycle multiple times during the summer, is it only because some fruit falls to the ground early and allows them to complete a lifecycle, or are there moths from last year that pupate at different times in the soil? Or do the same moths lay eggs multiple times?
Can someone help me understand?
Thanks!
Portland Debbie
I thin fruit and bag at the same time. I check the fruit before I bag so I can see if it has the telltale hole of a coddling moth bite. I throw those out. Does anyone know if they will grow anyway? I assume that they will not be a good home for the bug, because it doesn't keep growing. Maybe I should throw them away.
John S
PDX OR
How did others do with their Asian pears this year? I was very disappointed as I pruned, put up traps, thinned, and bagged with ziplocks, but had still about 90% infested fruit--I think with 3 different kinds of pests. There seemed to be an even higher rate of codlling moth in the ziplocked fruit than the exposed fruit and it didn't seem to matter how carefully/tightly they were bagged or whether I used sandwich bags or freezer bags. So, that seemed to be a total waste of time.
I picked up all fruit that fell within a few days and got it off the property so I hope that it cuts down on the amount of reinfestation for next year.
Can someone identify the problem that creates the dimples on the outside of the fruit and small cavities on the inside? Also does my core damage photo show coddling moth or apple maggot?
Thanks!
Debbie,
Portland
i am using a combo of ziplocs and fruit sox this year. I can confirm that some codling moth come in anyway. Some people use the liquid trap to control the moths as well as to count them. Most of my fruit hasn't been harvested yet. I broke another branch from too much fruit again this year. Having the bags can decrease the number of codling moths, even if you get one or two, that's a whole lot better than 9. Some dimples are attemped codling moth stings, that the fruit maintained the siege. Others are from a lack of calcium, I think I remember. I give apples and pears with codling moth damage to my worm bin instead of the compost pile. I agree with picking it all up quickly. I believe that asian pears get a lot more damage from codling moth than apple maggot.
John S
PDX OR
I'm very disheartened.
I only left a few apples on the two apple trees because I did quite a bit of topworking in them this spring and I was pretty merciless in the pruning because whatever variety they were is very susceptible to apple scab.
That said, I don't see obvious coddling moths in the fruits that are still hanging. So why am I bummed?
The "green gage" plum tree in the same orchard had a few more delicious fruit this year, but I was dismayed to find unmistakable coddling moth larvae infestation in more than one of them.
There was the characteristic dark crumbly frass plug on the surface, the dark crud near the pit, and then wriggling around inside; the white wriggling villain himself!
I was kind of late and lazy about putting the Surround-soaked footies on this year, but I'm not sure how much difference that made. Almost everything - covered or not - seems to be hosting codling moths and other visitors. I'll be making a lot of applesauce and apple butter...
mh
I believe the dimpling is due to apple maggot fly.
On the link below you can find a picture of dimpling although the pic posted here looks much bigger than what I usually see.
http://jenny.tfrec.wsu.edu/opm/displayS ... php?pn=140
The codling moth has several generations.....even if a person demonstrates sanitation, that does NOT eliminate the codling moths that may emerge both from that person's own property or from another person's property later in the season.
Baggies should work against both codling moth and/or apple maggot flies if they were applied very early in the season....if not, then I have to wonder how the baggies were sealed....I will let everyone know of my results later this year with what I did with baggies and footies.
Spinosad products (Entrust, Bulls-eye, etc.) are reportedly effective. One needs to spray in the evening to avoid injuring bees. And one needs to spray once a week, generally speaking. IMO, the fears about sprays, organic or inorganic are overdone....and a Spinosad product or a kaolin product should be effective. Some people have success with NEEM and NEEM is safe as well. Kaolin is probably safest. Then NEEM (but slightly less effective). Then Spinosad. I am not speaking much from direct experience on these, though, but from the experience of others.
I am beginning to wonder whether we should be hearing more about trichogramma wasps for codling moth.
And some people use Cyd-X which is effective for codling moth and is totally species specific. This makes it pretty harmless, I suspect.
I am using mating disruptors for codling moth....but this will not work in urban settings. Mating disruptors are also totally species specific and harmless to humans.
We need (IMO) more dialog about what is effective here.
My asian pears get hit every year. I live around Portland and I remember a while back there was a strange weather pattern with very late spring bloom and there was hardly any codling moth damage that year. Makes me wonder how much a difference would result by thinning out all fruit about every third year.
There is a product never mentioned on this thread yet, BT. The first initial stands for bacteria and the second is the name of the bacteria that only harms moths and butterflies. I used it to rid grain moths from my cupboards about 20 years ago. It's never advertised for that purpose but it worked. I simply removed all grain food that the larvae feed on, and then swabbed the corners out with the BT product every now and then, and keeping the doors closed as much as possible.
It may well work with the footsox/clay idea because BT needs to contact the larvae for it to work proper.
Regarding those 3 pictures the first one with sunken areas I have seen before on asian pear and like somebody said before I say calcium deficiency. I am now spraying chelated calcium and other seaweed minerals on my pears and have not noted any of this since. It's reported that pear roots are not good at collecting calcium from roots.
The last two pictures are codling moth damage. They will go in and eat the seeds and move from there to the next fruit. They will infest anything with soft seeds like pears have. Some fruit like peaches have hard seeds but have split pits where the codling moth can get to. You would think you have to worry about ferel hawthornes hosting the pest but hawthornes, even though they have seeds that appear like pears or apples, are stone hard. Hawthornes are codling moth resistant.
I looked up BT and found that it is not toxic to other insects or humans. It slow mode of action is to paralize the digestive system of the insect with in a few hours so the lavae would not eat. If infestation occurs through the gut mode rather than the bloodstream mode this would still be good since from what I remember reading in other articles the larvae will hatch and hide out on the fruit for up to a day before entering. Two and two together, safe product because death should occur before even entering the fruit anyways.
hi John S and others. I would appreciate some advice, since I know you are in Portland and have been growing Asian pears. I'm thinking one of my activities should be to reduce the size of my Asian pear trees so that I can manage them better, especially the coddling moth and apple maggots which chewed through all my bagging last year. What should I be doing in the next few months? I read that the coddling moth may be found on the bark of the tree as cocoons and numbers can be reduced by scraping them off and by spring with dormant oil. Since I have a shothole virus problem in my Italian prune tree, which is even larger than the asian pears, I was going to mix up oil and copper and use on all the trees, just for simplicity. Any thoughts on that?
I pruned the pears quite a lot last spring since they had had no pruning when the house was vacant, but only took out about 20% as recommended. This year, I want to take off some the bigger branches, especially those that are tall. The trees had been pruned to a central leader, but they are too tall for me to manage and the fruit too tall to harvest. I'm thinking I should remove the center to a more open tree. What do you think? When should i do this? Last year I did it when the buds began to swell. Also, last year I thought I was merciless in my fruit thinning of 50-70% of the fruit, but I still had too heavy a crop and had many broken branches when the fruit got big, so I know I have to do more pruning and more thinning.
Also if my one tree has a calcium deficiency (evidenced by the dimpled fruit above), can I treat the ground underneath so that the roots can absorb it during the spring rains, or do I have to spray calcium once the leaves are out?
Thanks for your advice.
Hi Debbie,
I don't know if you want to or can raise chickens where you live. It's a win-win. The chickens dig up the worms. It is a super healthy high protein meal for them, and then you don't get worms in your asian pears. Hardly any work on your part, and you save money on high quality organic feed.
Too high is too high. Central leader tends toward tallest and least accessible shape. I would gradually aim toward vase or modified central leader.
I don't think you need to worry about a virus jumping from prune to Asian pear. They tend to be specific within a species or genus. It may make you want to get rid of the prune though. Hard to get rid of.
I like to thin when I am putting the bags on. I throw the little asian pears into the area of other plants. They contain nutrients.
John S
PDX OR
Hi John, Thanks for you reply. I have more questions. Will the moths go into downed fruit or only when the green fruit is on the tree? I sent the thinnings off to the yard wastes last year for them to be composted away from my property.
I love the idea of chickens, but I travel for my job weeks at a time and we currently don't have pets so that I don't have to worry about pet sitting. Maybe I can borrow some chickens just for the summer, or is it more important to have them now in the winter when the cocoons are there? I can check with an acquaintance that has some. Would ducks work just as well do you think? He has both chickens and ducks, and I suspect I could borrow some. I've heard ducks are good sluggers so thought maybe they would go after the moth grubs. I was also thinking chickens would not work because my fruit trees are not isolated from the rest of my back yard gardens, and I remember my friend who raises chickens in Colorado says that her chickens eat absolutely everything green, so she can't let them loose in her garden for more than a short time. My whole back yard is steep, terraced in a U shape around a patio with the fruit trees, vegetable gardens, raspberry and blackberry rows and children's play area all overlapping in different ways. i worried that the chickens or ducks would be putting droppings where the toddler's play and eating up my veggie and bulb shoots. If it is just in the cold months, not much of a problem, though. It's too sloping and uneven for a chicken tractor but I've thought of moving them around. I also have raccoons in the back yard almost daily during the summer evenings and wondered if they would go after the chickens? If you have been raising chix in Portland, I'd appreciate advice about whether this could still work. If I borrow them, what months I should arrange it?
After doing so much work to put baggies on my fruit last season, and then having it do absolutely nothing, I am inclined not to bag this year. I used ziplock brand and was careful to zip them tight around the stems, so I don't know whether the bugs chewed through or still managed to get in around the stems, but it was a total bust with both maggot and moth hits, multiples on every piece of fruit. I could try the footies with kaolin I suppose. Do you think they would work if the baggies didn't?
Thanks John for your help.
Moths lay eggs in the fruit that is on the tree. When the fruit falls, they crawl into the soil. Having chickens dig now would be great, even just for a little while. The maggots will be biggest in April here, just before they fly up and land in the apple. Intermittent visits by chickens would be great. I don't/can't have chickens. Written into the homeowner's code. Raccoons will eat chickens. Need a "house or tractor" you can close up at night. Chickens will eat many other things. Ducks are better at eating slugs than chickens are. I only put on footies with kaolin clay. Not worth it otherwise. It works pretty well that way, not 100%, but pretty well, maybe 85%.
John S
PDX OR
Heavy-duty foot sox with kaolin clay have worked for me....they just about always work.
And the ziploc bags have also worked for me.
So, I am not trying to make Debbie feel bad, and there are always missing variables that are hard to identify....but I just can't see how both the baggies and the footies went bust for her.....I have to wonder if she applied early enough in the season or something. I just have to wonder what went wrong.
As to the chickens: The chickens will essentially do no good at all against the codling moth....because the codling moth flies quite a ways and will come onto her property from other sources........the chickens may actually help on the apple maggot fly problem, though, because if she can clear up the apple maggot problem on her own property and if there is more than 100 yards or so in distance from the nearest uncared-for apple tree, she might reduce her apple maggot problem......similarly, I think some homeowners should consider using beneficial nematodes on their own property in order to get rid of the over-wintering apple maggot larvae that are in the top couple inches of the soil directly underneath their apple trees.....clearing up the apple maggot problem locally is usually more do-able than clearing up the codling moth problem locally.
The chickens would be an education and a source of manure...both good things...and all experiments are good....imo and all.....so if she decides to use them, I hope she lets us know what the results are.
[quote="DonRicks":3rsd72yu]Heavy-duty foot sox with kaolin clay have worked for me....they just about always work.
And the ziploc bags have also worked for me.
So, I am not trying to make Debbie feel bad, and there are always missing variables that are hard to identify....but I just can't see how both the baggies and the footies went bust for her.....I have to wonder if she applied early enough in the season or something. I just have to wonder what went wrong.
[/quote:3rsd72yu]
Hi Don, I have been thinking thru my procedure too. I tried three kinds of plastic bags--heavy freezer bags, sandwich ziplocks and even tried a few with large breadsacks taped around the end of a branch. I started bagging when the fruit was about the size of a marble, so plenty early enough. I cinched it tight to the twig at the base of the fruit or the branch, depending on how I could secure the bag. Almost 100 percent of the bagged fruit was hit. The breadsack is the only one that worked to keep out the worms, but made a mess with the decaying leaves inside and would only work for fruit on the end of branches. I did make sure to pick or pick up and get off the property every piece of fruit that was hit, within a few days of when I noticed it. So I'm actually hoping that more diligent disposal of infected fruit will decrease my population better than the year before when I waited too long to clean up rotten fruit when we first moved in. I am in a high density older suburb in NE Portland with a small lot and close neighbors, so no doubt plenty of apple trees in flying distance, although none in adjacent properties that I can see.
So, I might try the kaolin footies, although it may be a challenge to bag baby Asian pears as the shorter stems seem to not allow enough room for tying them as the video shows with apples. It also looks like a pain to be so meticulous with every single piece of fruit. I also looked at organic sprays. The small area I sprayed with NEEM last year seemed to resist the bugs for a few weeks anyway, but I didn't buy enough spray to repeat and after a few weeks those fruit also got hit, just later than the ones which were untreated.
--Debbie
Idyllwild
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
John S
1 Guest(s)