is a garden and vegetable pest, small in size, but posing a significant danger to plants if not controlled. The most widespread are pear and apple honeysuckers.
Sometimes it seems that fruit trees in the garden can grow on their own, without requiring any care - you just need to plant the seedlings correctly in a suitable place, and then you won’t have to do anything else. However, it is not.
Fruit trees, especially apple and pear trees, require annual care - watering, fertilizing, pruning and preparation for winter. It is also necessary to protect apple and pear trees from diseases and pests, carry out preventive treatments, and, in case of damage, treat them.
This article will talk about the main pest that affects apple and pear trees - the copperhead or psyllid.
Description of the psyllid
These small insects with a body length of only a few millimeters got their name for their ability to jump, because their hind limbs are similar to the limbs of fleas, which is why these pests can jump.
Also, during their life, a sticky sweet liquid remains on the leaf plates and shoots, which is why this insect got the name “sweetheart”. Photo of copperhead on a leaf:
These pests cause great harm to fruit trees, as they pierce leaf plates and buds with their proboscis and suck out the cell sap from them. Because of this, the foliage and buds dry out ahead of schedule, curl up and fall off.
Distribution and risk factors
The apple borer is distributed everywhere, although it causes the main damage in the regions of central Russia and in the north-west of the country.
Moderately warm and humid weather promotes intensive reproduction of this pest. This pest is especially dangerous in individual untreated gardens. The most severely damaged varieties are those that bloom later, trees with a dense crown and thick, wrinkled bark. Trees on dwarf and semi-dwarf rootstocks are damaged somewhat less frequently. It has also been noted that in gardens bordering forest plantations, this pest more heavily infests fruit trees.
The main signs of the appearance of copperhead on trees
Psyllids may not be immediately visible on fruit trees, since their size is too small. However, the amount of damage caused by these pests can be significant when the insect colony grows large. Therefore, you should know the main symptoms of the appearance of copperhead on fruit trees in order to begin fighting them as early as possible.
The larvae of this pest usually settle in unopened buds - this is where you should look for them in early spring
. And on pear trees, it is the buds that are attacked by adult psyllids.
The main symptoms of the appearance of psyllids on apple and pear trees are:
- since the copperhead sucks the cell sap from the foliage and flowers, when the foliage and buds suddenly turn yellow and fall off in the spring, you can understand what kind of pest has settled on the fruit tree;
- foliage affected by copperhead slows down development and becomes deformed;
- if the copperhead fed on buds, flowers or ovaries, then they begin to dry out;
- deformed fruits form from the surviving ovaries, and their flesh becomes tasteless and tougher than usual;
- Another symptom of the appearance of psyllids on trees is the appearance of a sticky, sweetish liquid on the leaf blades - a waste product of the “harmful” bug. It covers the foliage completely, or accumulates next to the copperhead in the form of small balls. The main danger of this liquid is that it can stick the buds together, preventing the development of leaves and ovaries;
- Apple and pear trees become weaker after an attack by this pest, so they can be affected by pathogenic microorganisms.
Honeydew that appears on leaf blades can become an excellent environment for the development of various pathogens, in particular sooty fungus.
It gradually covers the entire leaf, interfering with the process of photosynthesis.
If sooty fungus moves onto apples and pears, their appearance and taste deteriorate sharply.
Maliciousness
The carrot psyllid causes damage to plants at all stages of its development, including egg laying. The larvae suck the juice from the umbrella crops and thereby weaken them.
When laying eggs, females secrete a toxic enzyme. Under its influence, foci of inflammatory diseases appear on the leaves. This causes the carrot tops to curl without changing their color.
The abundance of adult specimens on the tops causes such a destructive disease as leaf terry. This disease does not kill carrots, but the root crops are underdeveloped and tasteless. In carrots affected by terry, the core of the fruit is very hard.
Varieties of copperhead
There are several varieties of this pest that feed on and damage only certain types of garden and vegetable crops.
apple psyllid
As the name suggests, this “harmful” insect can only live on apple trees, feeding on the cell sap of the foliage. Adult individuals of the apple honeydew lay their eggs in the autumn under the bark near the buds, where the clutches overwinter
. In early spring, larvae hatch from them, move to the top of the bud cone and wait for them to begin to open. As soon as the tips of the leaves or buds emerge from the buds, the larvae of the apple borer crawl inside the buds and eat the foliage and flowers.
Photo of apple psyllid or honey psyllid:
In about 30 days, the larvae turn into adult insects
– this process ends approximately with the end of flowering of apple trees. And adult individuals fly to meadows or tree edges, where their main food is various types of herbaceous plants.
Interesting!
In total, only one generation of apple honeydew appears per season.
Around the second ten days of August, adult psyllids return to apple orchards to lay eggs, which overwinter on the trees so that new pests can be born from them in early spring.
Pear psyllids
This type of psyllid is very prolific - up to 5 generations of these “harmful” bugs can be born during the summer season.
The body of these insect pests of pear is darker than that of the apple honeydew.
Photos of pear suckers
The pear honeydew does not lay eggs for the winter - already fully formed individuals overwinter, which can hide from frost in fallen leaves, bark, and in cracks on shoots.
Fighting the copperhead on a pear - video
As soon as the air temperature rises above 0 degrees Celsius in early spring, these pests awaken from hibernation, and at air temperatures above +10 degrees they begin to lay eggs.
It is important to know!
A female pear psyllid can lay more than 1,000 eggs at one time.
Carrot suckers
If there is a pine or spruce forest next to a garden or vegetable plot, then from there a carrot psyllid may fly to the cultivated plants. This pest is smaller than other types of copperhead
- its light green body can reach only 1.5 mm in length.
Insects emerge from hibernation in early spring and at first feed only on the needles of pine and spruce trees. And in the second ten days of May, carrot suckers move into the gardens into beds with young carrot shoots.
In the last ten days of May, the females of these insects begin to lay eggs, which are attached to the back of the carrot tops or to their petioles. Each female can lay up to several hundred eggs
.
After about 20 days, the larvae hatch from the eggs, which become adults after 30 days.
Important!
The carrot sucker species produces only one offspring per season.
What does it look like
An adult apple honeydew is a winged insect with hopping hind legs, about 3mm long. It has two pairs of transparent wings of bright green or yellowish-green color. By autumn the color changes and becomes reddish.
The larvae (nymphs) of the copperhead are thickened. At the beginning yellowish-orange in color, later bluish-green. Nymphs differ from larvae in the presence of wing rudiments.
Folk methods of dealing with psyllids
In early spring, before the buds begin to bloom on fruit trees, the crowns of apple and pear trees should be treated with infusion of tobacco
or
yarrow
.
To prepare tobacco infusion
, you should dissolve 200-250 g of tobacco residues in a bucket of water and leave to infuse in a warm, dark place for 24 hours. Then the resulting infusion is filtered, poured into a sprayer and treated with fruit trees.
An infusion of yarrow to combat copperhead is prepared as follows:
dry leaves and stems of yarrow are crushed and poured into a bucket, filling it about 1/3, then water is poured to the top of the bucket and left to infuse for at least a few hours. Then the solution is filtered, and the trees are treated using a spray bottle or sprayer.
You can also use a soap solution
or
infusion of wood ash
.
To prepare a soap solution, dissolve a bar of laundry soap in a bucket of water.
. Treat all shoots with the resulting liquid before buds begin to bloom.
The infusion of ash is prepared as follows:
200 g of ash are dissolved in a bucket of water and left to infuse for a day, stirring the mixture periodically. Then the infusion is filtered and fruit trees are sprayed against copperhead.
Adult psyllids can be controlled with tobacco smoke.
. To do this, large piles of hay or dry grass are laid out around the garden, on which tobacco waste is laid (up to a couple of kg for each pile). Then the hay is set on fire and the trees are fumigated. This procedure should be carried out over several hours.
To protect carrot plantings from the vermin pest, the following procedures should be carried out:
- after planting the planting material, the bed must be covered with polyethylene or any non-woven material for a while until shoots appear;
- After sprouts appear, the beds should be covered with sifted wood ash mixed with tobacco dust. To ensure that this mixture remains on the carrot leaves, it is better to carry out this procedure early in the morning, while there is still dew on the plants.
If psyllid pest larvae appear on carrot seedlings, you can treat them with tobacco infusion, which is prepared in the same way as for treating fruit trees.
However, it must be remembered that folk remedies against honeyweed are effective only when the number of pests on cultivated plants is small
. If the copperhead colony has grown, then you will have to use solutions of insecticidal preparations to combat this pest.
Pear
The most common pest among other types of psyllids. The insect that appears in summer is reddish-orange, in winter it is brown and dark. When the air warms up to +3C, the insect wakes up and begins to eat intensively; at +10C it lays eggs. One generation has up to 1200 pieces!
In the southern territories, the female produces 5 generations per year, in the northern territories - 3-4. The drier and hotter the climate, the more fertile the female and the faster the maturation of the egg.
Chemicals against copperhead
To cope with a large number of psyllids on cultivated plants, you need to use certain insecticidal preparations.
To destroy the colony of this pest on garden and vegetable crops, you should use solutions of the following insecticides against the copperhead: Karbofos, Phosfamide, Metaphos or Thiophos.
However, such insecticidal preparations are slightly toxic to humans, but can be destructive to beneficial insects, in particular bees. Therefore, treatment with such means is prohibited during the flowering period of fruit trees.
. It is also not recommended to treat gardens with insecticides that are located near water bodies, so as not to kill aquatic inhabitants.
Flower beetles, honey beetles, leaf rollers, codling moths - video
Preventive actions
First of all, you need to strengthen the immunity of fruit trees, because strong, strong apple and pear trees are practically not susceptible to attacks by pests
. To do this, you need to regularly apply fertilizing containing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to the tree trunk circles throughout the season.
In the autumn, mandatory sanitary pruning of trees is carried out, removing all damaged, dry or diseased branches, and also cutting off old bark and moss from trunks and shoots. Fallen leaves are removed from the tree trunk circle. All plant residues should be immediately burned off-site.
Despite its small size, the copperhead can cause great damage to apple and pear trees.
– it deprives the foliage of cellular sap, as a result the leaves die, the affected buds and flowers may also die, causing the yield to drop sharply. Therefore, it is necessary to begin the fight against this pest immediately after traces of its presence on the trees are detected.
Prevention
Prevention is the best measure to combat the pear borer and its apple relative. If you prevent the spread of pests in the garden, there will be no one to destroy.
The main preventive control measures should be considered and applied in practice, the following:
- Timely pruning of fruit trees with the obligatory removal of thickening, damaged and dry branches.
- Cleaning the bark of trees from lichens, mosses and other alien growths.
- Harvesting remaining fruit from trees before winter.
- If pears are infected with honey worms in the summer, the litter under them should be collected in late autumn and burned along with the wintering insects.
