What Is Getting Ready to Damage My Plants Now?

Some insects that feed on plants in our landscapes are not that damaging but some of them, if allowed to go unchecked, can ruin a plant and actually kill it. We are not necessarily concerned about a few caterpillars that do a little nibbling on a few leaves and then turn into a beautiful butterfly or moth. We need to let these 'friends' eat their few leaves and develop, so we are helping Mother Nature and enjoying the beauty around us. What we need to be concerned about are insects that harm our plants and give us nothing in return. They don't produce anything we can eat, like honey, and they don't pollinate flowers that will produce fruit or vegetables.

Now is the time to be looking for bagworms that could be in some of your landscape plants. These tiny little worms feast on many evergreen trees and shrubs. They can devour most of the foliage on junipers, arborvitae, spruce and other plants in a matter of weeks.

Bagworms pass the winter as eggs (300 or more) inside bags that served as cocoons for last year's females. The eggs hatch in late May or early June in the Miami Valley and the tiny larvae crawl out to feed. Each one uses silk and bits of plant material to make a small bag that protects and camouflages it as during feeding and growth. Bagworm caterpillars feed for about six weeks, enlarging the bag as they grow and withdraw into it when disturbed so you never see them. Older larvae strip evergreens of their needles and devour whole leaves of susceptible deciduous species. Heavy infestations over several consecutive years, especially when coupled with other stresses, can lead to plant death. Don't confuse the Bag Worm with Tent Caterpillars or the Fall Web Worm which occur later in the season.

The bag worm, pictured here, is many times mistaken for a pine cone on evergreens. When they hatch and begin to develop they can hardly be seen but in just a few weeks they can do some serious damage. Mother Nature has provided this insect with a casing that is hard to see because it is made of a very tough silk type thread and some of the foliage from the plant it is devouring. This "home" moves along with the young worm and is very well camouflaged. The casing is so impervious that pesticides used to kill the insect will not penetrate it. If you are going to control this critter there are a couple of ways to do it: picking the casings off plants at any time is the most effective way for control or spraying with something like Sevin when the insect is young and coming out of its casing to munch on your plant. The young insect moves about by swinging from plant to plant, soon after hatching, on a silk like thread that blows in the wind. If the bagworm is not controlled when young, while it is coming out of its "bag" to feed, it is almost impossible to stop their damage.



See if you can spot any bagworms this summer, hopefully not in your yard.

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Meadow View Growers

www.meadowview.com.

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