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Box caterpillars

CopperdogCopperdog Posts: 617
in Problem solving
I’ve decided my plan of action for these pesky blighters is to pick them off by hand. I have collected around 50 from around 6 pyramids in the garden. Is there a season for them or will I have to check them weekly until winter? I have some maxicrop seaweed food as a foliage feed. Is this the best thing to use or can anyone recommend anything better? Thankyou 

Posts

  • amancalledgeorgeamancalledgeorge Posts: 2,736
    50? Goodness, makes me doubly happy to have given up on box. It's your battle to fight but yes they will be back. The RHS mentions the possibility of three generations of them a year. https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=760 
    To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow
  • shazza_coleshazza_cole Posts: 3
    What’s the best treatment for box caterpillar think we may them in one of our topiary spiral box planters 
  • KeenOnGreenKeenOnGreen Posts: 1,831
    Not what you may want to hear, but in our experience the best treatment was to get rid of all of our Box.  We are in London and it got worse and worse each year.  If you can be bothered to use pheromone traps to catch the moths, and to invest lots of time regularly to pick off the caterpillars, then you may be successful. A foliar feed to help speed up new growth might also help.  We decided all of that time was more wisely spent on much less needy plants. 
  • CopperdogCopperdog Posts: 617
    Thankyou @amancalledgeorge and @KeenOnGreen for your help and advice 
  • neilberryneilberry Posts: 18
    Our box hedges were decimated two summers ago by box caterpillars...some of our hedges really looked like they were almost gone.  But I got a spray (xen tari which is like a protein that they disagree with, so supposedly it's safe for other wildlife?) I spray the hedges once a month or so during the spring/summer (sometimes I add a health mix into the liquid to spray at the same time, which is supposed to help against box blight). I also hung up a box moth catcher nearby.  Not sure if the moth catcher is as important, but it does seems to catch some - so maybe helpful.  It's all a minor pain, and in retrospect probably should have picked a less needy hedge, but that's been enough to do the job for us and maybe easier than vigilantly hunting down individual caterpillars. 


  • GertrudejeykllroseGertrudejeykllrose Posts: 3
    I have been using xen-tari as well for the last 2 years and it works very well on our box hedges. I also use the health mix which can be mixed in to the same solution as xen-tari and sprayed at the same time.
  • CopperdogCopperdog Posts: 617
    Thankyou @neilberry and @Gertrudejeykllrose for the helpful advice. Will look into that. 
  • Jackie-HJackie-H Posts: 9
    Just posted my own query about this problem before searching for other posts, so sorry for repeating (I'm new to the forum) I hope you manage to save your box pyramids. Good luck. 
  • andreamoretonandreamoreton Posts: 46
    I have box Caterpillar !!fed up so need new hedging that grows fast and will.not surcome to this Caterpillar 
  • amancalledgeorgeamancalledgeorge Posts: 2,736
    We replaced out box hedge (thankfully it was only young) with small leaved euonymus and after a couple of trims is filling in nicely nearly a year later. 
    To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow
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