If your plum tree sheds fruit prematurely and you are unfortunate enough to find maggot-like creatures inside, you are most likely dealing with the plum moth. The moth is a troublesome pest in agriculture and private gardens.
Maggots in plums come from a moth
Worth knowing about the plum moth
The plum moth, zoologically Grapholita funebrana, is a moth that likes to lay its eggs on fruit trees
- apricots
- sour cherries
- pears
- or just plums
specialized. The adult moth has elongated, triangular wings with a grey-brown pattern.
For reproduction, the female lays her eggs on the underside of the fruit in late spring. From there, the hatching caterpillars burrow into the fruit and feed on it inside.
Two generations develop over the season because some of the caterpillars take a break from development in the meantime. For the metamorphosis into moths, they pupate in white webs on the tree or on the ground.
damage picture
The fruits ripen prematurely due to the infestation and fall off. A colorless droplet usually hangs on the underside where the caterpillar has burrowed.
How to get rid of the plum moth?
Eliminate infested fruit
The best way to combat an acute infestation is to dispose of all the infested fruit as thoroughly as possible - i.e. all the fallen fruit and the fruit that is still hanging and has the typical drilled hole.
pheromone traps
In the spring, around the mating season (May/June), pheromone traps can help. They lure the males with a sexual scent and trap them so that fewer females can mate.
lanyard
A tether is a fairly effective method of containing new generations of prune moths the following year. Catch belts, which are available from various manufacturers in the garden trade, work purely mechanically: They are simply wrapped around the trunk at a height of 20-40 cm from June and serve as caterpillar collectors. The pre-developed caterpillars tend to crawl up the tree trunk from the ground to pupate - they find ideal conditions for this in the fang belt. If you search the belt every two months or so, you can catch a large proportion of the caterpillars and render them harmless.
parasitic wasps
Using natural predators is one of the most natural methods of pest control. Ichneumon wasps (€22.99) are suitable opponents against plum moths. They are exposed via cardboard cards 2-3 times a year from June. A parasitic wasp can parasitize up to 120 plum moth eggs.