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Grease bands
Nanny Beach
Posts: 8,719
in Fruit & veg
Trying to be "Organic", we dont spray anything, but every year, we "share" our apples, pears and plum, with various maggotts, so thought I would do the grease band this year, is it successfull, will it help?
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Posts
Probably not, or not much. Grease bands are primarily to prevent ants climbing trees to 'farm' aphids and to stop Winter moth caterpillars, neither of which are a cause of maggots in fruit.
Maggoty fruit is caused by flying insects, such as the Codling moth and Plum moth. You can buy hormone traps for those which can help a little but are primarily intended to tell you when to spray with insecticide. If you don't want to use insecticides then try the hormone traps alone and you might get a little less damage.
Or just close your eyes when you eat the fruit!
Thanks guys, course they do ruin the fruit, a lot of it, brown and inedible, my Daughter had a maggott in a plum, put her right off, my grandaughter (5) said Mum had a worm in her plum!
Course I said "maggotts", I have never seem any of the little devils that cause the problems, they appear to be long gone, leaving the damaged fruit behind.
I get plagued with maggoty plums (Victoria), greengages(forgotten which type) and apples (Discovery) I used grease bands a couple of years ago in the autumn and had far fewer maggots the following season. They also deterred the ants that summer too. I forgot to use them last autumn, so expect extra 'protein' this summer! Last year I used the hormone traps (apple and plum), which were (for me) a waste of money. I've marked an August reminder on my calendar to get grease bands this year.
Grease bands won't help against maggots but some years are much worse than others for the flying pests which cause maggots and that is probably what you experienced. No harm in using them though - ants farming aphids can damage all of the young leaves and seriously weaken a tree, resulting in poor crops the following season. I use grease bands on all of my fruit trees.
garden books say May for traps, and november for grease bands.
Would a winter wash help with any of these?