The spider mite is a small and dangerous pest that looks like a miniature spider, no more than a millimeter in size. It multiplies rapidly and affects plantings. A spider mite on an apple tree prefers the juice of young plants, because of its effect, immunity is weakened and the tree becomes vulnerable. A large number of pests can even kill the apple tree.
Spider mites on an apple tree.
Who can leave a cobweb on an apple tree?
In order to choose an effective pest control agent, it is important to determine who exactly settled on the tree.
Many insects love the apple tree, leaving a cobweb on the leaves:
- spider mite;
- apple moth;
- hawthorn;
- honeydew;
- unpaired silkworm;
- spider aphid;
- ringed silkworm;
- winter moth.
Apple moth
This pest is ubiquitous, and the most reliable protection against it is the timely processing of the fruit tree. If you forget about it, voracious caterpillars can spoil most of the harvest.
The moth is a small white butterfly. When settling on an apple tree, it lays a lot of eggs in secluded places (near the buds, in the places where the branches branch). Caterpillars hibernate under the ovaries, and with the arrival of spring they crawl out and begin to eat first the buds, then the foliage.
As a result, the leaves begin to dry, and the branches are covered with cobwebs. Each such cobweb can contain up to 70 caterpillars, which subsequently form pupae. Butterflies emerge from them in June.
Control methods
If a web is found, it must be collected manually from all those parts of the tree where you can reach.
They fight the caterpillars by spraying the foliage and branches with solutions: special preparations ("Entobacterin", "Dendrobacillin") or a self-made infusion of tobacco.
In the first months of spring, the shields are cut off and burned. During the budding period, even before the buds form, the apple tree is sprayed with a solution. Prepare it like this - dissolve one of the preparations in a bucket of water: 4 ml of phytoverm, 10 ml of kemifos, 2 ml of decis or 10 ml of kinmix.
If the insects are too prolific, use a solution consisting of a bucket of water and 10 ml of fufanon.
Important! In the fall, you must carefully examine the branches of the tree. If eggs are visible on them, they are removed manually by scraping. The damaged branches are cut and immediately burned. Before the onset of cold weather, the apple tree is treated with milk of lime.
Signs of appearance
The spider mite is a member of the arachnid family.
It is small in size, growing no more than 1 mm in length. It is possible to see it from the underside of the foliage, where it is attached by punctures in the leaf tissue, sucking the plant sap out of them.
In places of punctures on the upper side of the leaves, necrosis is formed - a white, yellow or brown spot formed from dead tissue cells.
With a massive attack of a tick on an apple tree, capable of producing up to 5 generations per year, gardeners often face the complete death of a garden culture.
A large colony of a pest that has settled on apple leaves looks like a bloom outwardly. When a large tick-borne population is reached, a cobweb becomes clearly visible on the foliage.
Winter moth
If the caterpillars on the apple tree in the web are green, with 1 dark and several light stripes on the sides, then this is a winter moth.In the process of feeding, they make their way into the buds, eat them, and when foliage appears on the apple tree, they move on to it.
Control methods
To protect the tree from this pest, adhesive belts are installed on the tree trunk below the crown. trying to get close to the branches, insects fall into a trap. When there are enough individuals on the belt, it is removed and burned, and a new one is installed in return.
Apple honeydew
Small insects, the length of which does not exceed 3 mm, prefers young trees. The difficulty in detecting them is that the pest chooses inconspicuous places for laying eggs: folds of the bark, for example.
With the arrival of spring, larvae hatch from the eggs, which suck the juice from the leaves, buds and flowers of the tree, causing serious damage to the future harvest.
In the process of vital activity, insects leave excrement on the branches and foliage, creating a favorable environment for the development of a sooty fungus, similar to a cobweb. Because of this, flowers and leaves begin to turn black first, and then dry.
Control methods
You can cope with the larvae during the growing season if you spray the apple tree with an infusion of tobacco, ash, yarrow or soapy water.
Adults are destroyed by fumigating the trees with tobacco smoke: heaps of straw are laid around the trunk, 2 kg of tobacco dust are poured on top of each, and set on fire. Within 2 hours, the piles should burn, producing smoke. Insects will fall into the ground, and it is carefully dug up.
How to fight and how to spray
The cobweb has a very bad effect on the apple tree.
The web harms the apple tree in 2 directions:
- Leaves in a dense white cover cannot participate in photosynthesis - the plant does not receive the substances necessary for development.
- Pests that produce cobwebs feed on leaves, ovaries and sap, weakening the tree.
As a result, the tree stops fruiting, discards the ovaries, leaves for the winter fragile, may not survive the cold and eventually dies.
At the first sign of a cobweb, they immediately begin to fight its sources. There are 3 ways:
- Mechanical.
- Bacteriological.
- Chemical.
First of all, you need to remove the cobweb. If it remains, then spraying by any means will be ineffective: the active substances will not get on the pests. Her along with the caterpillars:
- collected by hand;
- sucked up with a vacuum cleaner;
- wound on a long stick;
- cut off the affected leaves and flowers.
Before that, you need to spread a film under the tree, so that later you can easily remove the fallen caterpillars.
Everything that has been collected is necessarily burned. The remaining pests are removed with various preparations: folk, microbiological, chemical.
Ringed silkworm
If the apple tree is covered with cobwebs, on which caterpillars of a dark, almost black color with blue stripes on the back are visible, then a ringed silkworm has wound up on the tree. During the day, the caterpillars practically do not show activity, but at night they eat both flowers and foliage.
Control methods
You can prevent the appearance of a pest if you spray the tree with milkweed or wormwood infusion even before the buds bloom. From industrial means "Bitoxibacillin" and "Lepidocid" are effective, but they should be used only after the air temperature warms up above 15 ° C.
Processing time
The apple orchard is treated against ticks on time throughout the vegetative period.
Before bud break
The first spraying is planned in the spring before bud break. The main task of these activities is to destroy those insects that have survived from winter.
The processing time is March, when the ambient temperature warms up from 5 ° C and above. Trees and a trunk circle are sprayed with copper or iron sulfate.
At the end of bud break
At the end of the budding stage, the anti-mite treatments are repeated. The optimal time is May, before flowering. The garden is sprayed with any drug of choice - insecticidal or acaricidal.
At the flowering stage
With intensive flowering of apple trees, insecticides and acaricides are treated only in isolated cases when there is a threat to the life of trees. This is due to the fact that the active substances of pesticides penetrate into the deep layers of plant cells and adversely affect the future harvest, can have a detrimental effect on pollinators attracted by flowers.
The most suitable means for treatments during mass flowering are folk recipes.
At the fruiting stage
The next anti-mite treatment occurs at the very beginning of fruit formation - usually in June.
At the stage of active ripening of fruits, approximately 3-4 weeks before the expected date of harvest, the insecticides and acaricides used are replaced with folk remedies.
At the end of the season
The main task of the final anti-mite spraying is to get rid of the pests remaining for the winter. It is carried out after picking apples, until the end of leaf fall. The drugs used are copper sulfate, urea, insecticides.
Spider mite
These insects are so small that it is almost impossible to see them without a magnifying glass: their length reaches a maximum of 0.5 mm. They develop quickly - from the moment of laying eggs to the appearance of an adult, it can take only a week.
Spider mites damage branches, fruits and leaves.
Methods for dealing with red spider mites
If the insects have a purple or scarlet color, or the cobweb on the leaves of the apple tree is very small, and the inner side of the leaves is covered with specks of silver or cream color, the tree is treated with Bicol or Verticillin.
Methods for dealing with other types of spider mites
In addition to red, there are other varieties of this pest. Insects suck sap from the foliage, and by the middle of summer, if nothing is done, the tree can lose half of its leaves.
To prevent this, it is recommended to spray the apple tree with a tobacco solution. It is prepared according to this recipe: 1 kg of tobacco dust is poured with a bucket of water. Straining the infusion, add 10 liters of water to it. In this liquid, dissolve 50 g of shavings of laundry soap. The tree is processed twice, taking a break of 7 days between procedures.
Another effective remedy: 1 kg of dried chamomile flowers is poured with a bucket of water, left overnight. Filter the solution and spray also twice with an interval of 1 week.
Important! Such methods will not help to cope with a large number of ticks. If there are a lot of insects on the tree, you will need to use chemicals.
Nitrofen is a fairly toxic substance; it is impossible to spray it on trees that are closer than 200 m to residential buildings. It is best to use bioinsecticides: "Bicol" or "Bitoxabacillin". They are less harmful and can be used in the garden.
Preventive measures
It is quite simple to protect apple trees from the invasion of a spider mite: you need to collect fallen leaves in a timely manner, cut off branches and clean the trunks of old bark, burn them.
What diseases and pests lead to spider webs?
The foliage of roses affected by spider mites turns brown, loses their attractive appearance and color, the buds mostly wither, and the surviving ones are smaller than those formed on a healthy bush.
A plant deprived of the normal amount of nutrients does not have time to prepare for wintering and may die if the cold season turns out to be frosty, with little snow.
Rose bushes, exhausted by attacks of ticks, often disappear due to a drop in immunity to gray rot.
How to get rid of a spider mite on a rose? Noticing a small number of spider mites on a rose, you can get rid of them by spraying with an aqueous solution of laundry soap.How to treat a rose from a spider mite? A more radical method, when a cobweb has already formed on a rose, is treatment with Aktellik or Nero.
Marigold
Marigolds, quite unpretentious to care for, are also susceptible to attacks by spider mites if the summer is dry and hot. The settled pest colony drinks the juice first in young shoots, and then attacks the previously regrown branches and leaves.
The formation of buds on the plant slows down, the already formed flowers do not open completely, they have an atypical shape for the species. The leaves curl, the flower begins to wither. Spider mites can cause marigold disease.
Spider mites on marigolds: what are the control measures? The preparations Aktofit, Apollo, infusions of onion peels, and potato tops will help protect flowers from existing ticks.
Apple tree
With the primary defeat of an apple tree with a spider mite, red, black dots appear on the leaves of the tree. On the back of the leaves there are clusters of small bugs slowly moving along the surface.
The defeat of a tree in the flowering stage leads to a violation of the process of ovary formation. If a spider mite attacks an apple tree during the period of fruit ripening, then due to the inability to absorb enough sunlight by the affected leaves and metabolic disorders, the tree will shed some of the fruits.
If most of the green mass of the tree is affected by a tick, then it may die altogether.
A tree emaciated by ticks has a reduced immunity, therefore, the risk of apple scab and bacterial diseases is increased. If spraying trees with herbal infusions does not correct the situation, then drugs No. 30, 30c, 30m, Rovikurt, colloidal sulfur are used.
Marijuana
With the initial lesion, the foliage of marijuana gradually changes color due to numerous foci of punctures and the subsequent suction of juice by mites. In the absence of control measures, the number of ticks on the bush grows.
As a result of the increased appetites of the colony, the plant does not have the strength to form a normal peduncle, becomes less resistant to possible temperature changes, and is more difficult to tolerate the lack of modern watering.
Spider mite on marijuana - what to do? Save marijuana from a spider mite by spraying a solution of bleach through a spray bottle (tbsp. L. Per 1 liter of water). If there are a lot of insects, then use the drug SM-90.
The typical time for the defeat of soybeans by spider mites is the end of May, the first two decades of July, since during this period the deciduous mass of plants has the greatest juiciness. The siphoning of growing soybeans by the mites can prevent the plants from reaching their typical crop size.
This will lead to less formation of ovaries, lodging of the cultivated crop, which threatens the defeat of ripening beans by rot viruses or soil pests.
To prevent a decrease in the volume of the soybean crop due to pests, chemical preparations are used.
If you see gray-yellow caterpillars in a thick, massive, dense web, you have an apple moth.
If you notice dense white cobwebs all over the tree, this is apple sucker. Its larvae suck the juices from the plant, and then secrete a sticky substance that sticks together the buds, foliage, buds, this forms a sooty fungus, which we see as a white spider web.
If you find clearly visible cocoons on apple trees, you will understand that the trees have been hit by a hawthorn. These are small caterpillars that curl up and hibernate in cocoons.
But when a spider mite appears, you will see a cobweb in the form of transparent turbid films with many black very small dots - these are eggs.
Spider aphid
As a rule, aphids appear at the same time as spider mites. The pest multiplies very quickly - the female is able to postpone up to 100 larvae at a time.
Methods for dealing with green aphids
Green aphids choose young trees. The insect sucks juices from fruits, branches and foliage using the proboscis, causing the leaves to curl and fall off. Another sign of the presence of green aphids is a black coating on the trunk.
To remove it, apple trees are sprayed with tobacco infusion.
Methods for dealing with gray aphids
Gray, on the other hand, settles mainly on mature trees. A symptom of the appearance of a pest is swollen foliage that has changed its color. Subsequently, the leaves curl and dry.
Get rid of aphids of this species using bioinsecticides ("Verticillin", for example). The processing begins when the air temperature is set at 22-24 ° C. Dissolve 100-500 ml of the product in water, spray.
After treatment with the solution, the top layer of the bark is cleaned off, and the trunk is covered with whitewash. Special traps are fixed on the trunk - belts made of thick paper or straw. The pest lays eggs in them, and at the end of autumn the belts are removed and burned.
Prevention
It is better to prevent the appearance of pests so that you do not have to fight them. For this, procedures are carried out to destroy other pests, as well as to increase immunity.
Preventive measures include:
- spring pruning and spraying;
- use of insecticides before flowering;
- cleaning damaged branches;
- bark cleaning and whitewashing;
- cleaning of the trunk circle.
Keeping your garden healthy will minimize the chance of spider mite infestation. But do not think that leaving will give a 100% guarantee. Ticks are small and mobile, easily carried by the wind from neighboring areas.
Folk remedies against cobwebs on an apple tree
How to deal with cobwebs on apple trees if you don't want to use chemicals in your garden? Turn to folk remedies.
There are several recipes for non-toxic spray solutions:
- Laundry soap shavings and ash are dissolved in a bucket of water. Thanks to the soap, the solution will cover the leaves with a film, which is not easy for insects to bite. Ash will make the foliage taste unpleasant.
- 1 kg of shag is poured into a bucket of hot water. If desired, the solution is boiled for 10 minutes and then left for 3 days. After this period, the infusion is filtered, 2 buckets of water are added to it. The resulting liquid is sprayed on diseased trees.
- 1 kg of nettle is poured with warm water, foliage is treated with this infusion.
- Take 200 g of onions and husks, add a bucket of warm water to them. Insist 6 days, filter, use as a spray solution. Within 6 months, this liquid can be used on trees no more than 3 times. It will protect them from spider mites, aphids and leafworms.
- 800 g of dried yarrow is poured with half a bucket of boiling water, left for half an hour. Then add water to a whole bucket, insist for 2 days. Trees are treated with the solution immediately after flowering.
Additional measures for tick control
The success of the manipulations carried out against the pest depends on the stage of infection, and on its number. First of all, you need to inspect the flower to identify an insect. If it is found, rinse the bush with warm water and wipe the leaves with a weakly concentrated alcohol solution.
When the plant dries up from water procedures, it should be sprayed with an appropriate chemical or folk remedy. You also need to process the window sill, all the objects next to the pot. After a week, it is necessary to reuse the working solution, apply fertilizer with potassium to increase the plant's defenses.
Chemicals
What if the apple tree is in the web and there are too many insects? Traditional methods may not cope with a large number of pests. Then you can use special effective means.
"Bitoxibaccillin"
It is used against apple moth, spider aphid and mite, moth, silkworms, leafworms and hawthorns.To do this, 40-80 g of the drug is dissolved in a bucket of water, the solution is sprayed with the calculation of 1 liter of liquid per 10 m². Treatments are carried out at intervals of 7 days.
"Bicol"
Also destroys most of the pests that weave webs on the apple tree.
The tool is used only during the growing season, bred according to the instructions.
"Endobacterin"
The spores of the composition are effective against 97% of harmful insects (silkworms, moths, aphids, and others), but do not pose a danger to useful ones.
10 g of the drug is diluted in 1 liter of water at room temperature, kept for at least 1 hour, and proceeds to processing.
Biologicals
| Name | Pest | Method of application and processing |
| Bitoxibaccillin | Fights silkworm, spider mite, moth, aphid, leafworm, hawthorn, American white butterfly, moth. | A solution of 40-80 g of the substance, 5 liters of water. For 10 sq. m use 1 liter of solution. The interval between treatments for apple trees with cobwebs is 1 week. |
| Bicol | Moth, hawthorn, aphid, American white butterfly, spider mite, apple moth. | 40-80 g of substance per 10 liters of water. For better adhesion of the composition, add 2 tbsp. l dry or 0.5 l skim milk. Spraying during the growing season, during the season 2 treatments are done with an interval of 7 days. Consumption - 0.7 kg of the drug per hectare. |
| Verticillin | Fights whitefly, spider mites, aphids. | 100-500 ml of the drug is soaked in 5-10 liters of water, the solution is left for a day. Abundant watering of apple trees with cobwebs is carried out at intervals of 7-14 days. |
| Entobacterin | Fights against aphids, moths, golden silkworms, and other leaf-eating parasites. | 10 g of the substance is diluted in 1 liter of warm water. Spraying at an air temperature of 20-30 degrees. Up to 2 treatments are carried out per season. Do not use a cobweb remover after rain. |
| Dendrobacillin | Moth, leafworm, moth, silkworms. | A solution of 20-30 g of powder, 5 liters of water will help fight parasites. For 1 sq. m is used 0.5 g of the drug. The substance is allowed to be used when apple trees are blooming, 5 days before harvesting. Up to 2 treatments are carried out per season with an interval of 7 days. |
Preventive measures
You can protect trees from pests by following simple rules:
- hollows in trees must be quickly repaired;
- remove weeds around the apple trees;
- before the onset of the growing season, the apple trees must be cut off;
- regularly apply top dressing;
- do not plant flowers and crucifers around apple trees;
- treat any damage to the bark immediately.
Advice! The natural enemy of spider aphids is ladybugs. You can attract them to the site by planting dill, parsley or caraway next to the apple tree.
In order for the apple trees to give a lot of apples, it is important to regularly inspect the foliage and trunks, and if a web is found, immediately proceed to the fight against the pest that has left it. Delay can not only significantly reduce the yield, but also completely ruin the tree.
