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Sawfly plum gooseberry redcurrant
kbop
Posts: 12
in Fruit & veg
Hi I noticed my plum tree only had a few last year but this year showing a few improved signs.
however the few plums I did get last year all had small maggots in the middle which i believe is plum sawfly? I read spraying the flowers with something may help but the flowers have come and gone now so not sure if it's too late and if not what is best to use to spray?
i have just picked a lot of sawfly caterpillars from the gooseberry and red currant bush but they only eat the leave not go inside the fruit like the plum?
thanks
0
Posts
Hi kbop!
I think if the plums ripened with the maggot inside, that it's most likely an infestation by plum moth larvae. (Plum sawfly tend to make the fruit fall off the tree early.) They pupate in the soil under the tree.
If you want to spray (and many of us would prefer to avoid spraying anything we're going to eat), you shouldn't do it when the flowers are open because you'll kill the bees etc which are pollinating your flowers. I'd advise you to google "maggots in plums" and look at the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society)'s web entry about them, which has a photo for identification, and explains about pheromone traps (to catch adult male moths so fewer females are fertilised) and about spraying.
You're right about gooseberry sawfly only eating the leaves and not the fruit. They are specific to redcurrants and gooseberries and won't attack anything else. Picking them off works - they tend to drop off the bush onto the ground when disturbed so putting a cloth or sheet of newspaper under the bush helps to catch more. Unfortunately there are often several generations on the same bush so you need to keep checking for more of the blighters!