What I believe to be a tent caterpillar egg sac. It’s hard to tell for sure as I’m far from expert. They’re HARD. I pried off about 50 by hand. Unfortunately, I chucked them on the ground, believing that would be good enough. Then, I started googling known peach tree pestilence and it appears they can only be…
KILLED WITH FIRE. Seriously! They said I should’ve put them in something and burned them all to hell.
Granted, it could be a different pest, like some of the borers. I don’t believe that is so as this poor tree has be defoliated several of its years, not bored.
We don’t like using commercial pesticides when we can do things manually or even put off bugs with baby powder (you’d be surprised but powdered sulfur and baby powder can work – they come right off, though). The old soap and / or pepper has less impressive results. Obviously, de-saccing by hand was a drag and there are more that I cannot reach.
I’ll have to watch it and may use some soap/ oil mixture to suffocate them. Probably make them stronger…Boo!
Commercial pesticides can be pretty tough. A friend of mine “wrote” something less nice with pesticides on the lawn outside his school when he graduated. It took a while before it grew back
Salt can do that! Growing up on a working ranch, where we grew everything we ate (see? I got to say it
again
this week!) means that we’re very aware of what we use. When your potable water supply is your own spring, you’re careful about what you place on the earth atop it!
Maybe toss them in a bucket of salt water, or ammonia. I can’t imagine them living through that.
We use borax and that’s a good reminder — for future. Too late now! I don’t use ammonia (can’t breathe near it) but if it kills me, it’d kill them, too!
You are welcome to keep your tent caterpillars over there. We have a few fruit tree nasties most of which can be controlled with chilli sprays or dishwashing detergent, but there is a mite on lychee trees which requires chemicals…..as I spent the first half of my life being poisoned by ag chemicals I don’t use them any more.
The GOOD news is (I looked this up) usually, a predator gets them and keeps them from getting completely out of hand. However, in my case, it’s the lonely peach tree! I know they’re munching on hardwood trees of our forests but when they settle atop the peach tree, THAT’S what’s ‘filigreeing’ it most years. I’m happy that I learnt and I’m happy that it’s mostly-denuded of the bastards but I wish I’d known not to dump them on the ground. Tree’ll have to survive another round.
I bought ladybirds to kill all the nasties on my roses. I don’t think they’d get through those tough seed/pods though.
We have them naturally but they’re being KILLED off by these ‘Japanese beetles’ that look like ladybirds except they’re orange. We call them, ‘orange bugs’ at El Rancho Reedo…cos we’re scientifically-minded. http://www.creaturecontrol.net/Asian%20Lady%20Bug
Well, I don’t think I’ll be booking into the El Rancho Reedo!
Creepy & bitey – no do.
You read about my leeches?
…And they BITE and it hurts. I kill them by hand — and they swarm by the tens of thousands. Creepy and bite-y. No bueno.