Green caterpillars on gooseberries: ways to fight, 3 folk remedies

Gooseberry caterpillars will nibble all the leaves if left unchecked. A few individuals will not eat the entire green mass, but more than ten larvae will bring significant damage to the plant. In addition to leaves, caterpillars can nibble on fruits.

Pest control must be immediate. Timely processing with chemical or folk remedies will save gooseberries from the inevitable loss of foliage and fruits.

The main features of the appearance of pests

Inspect the bushes regularly, you can find caterpillars on young leaves. Photo:

1. Pests eat not only leaves, but also buds... As a result, it disrupts photosynthesis within the plant, causing it to stop growing. If the gardeners don't take action,
2. They carry many diseases, including viral, which cannot be treated, fungal, the fight against which can take a long time. To avoid the death of gooseberries, it is important to start fighting insects in time.

Stop spraying gooseberries one month before harvest. Photo: The author of the video tells how to treat gooseberries from pests: adults and caterpillars. He focuses on what folk remedies will help to cope with them:

How to treat gooseberries from caterpillars?

The methods of struggle will be described below, but here we propose to consider ways to prevent the occurrence of caterpillars. It should be carried out in spring and autumn, as well as before and after blooming.

1. When it gets warm, it is recommended to treat it with a solution of ash, chalk and copper sulfate. They not only spray shrubs, but also water the ground around, because there may be larvae.
2. To avoid the appearance of caterpillars on the gooseberry, which will eat up the leaves, many gardeners use a proven method - boiling water. It is important that the liquid is 90 ° C. Pour it over the soil near the bushes. This procedure kills the larvae.
3. Be sure to collect the fallen leaves and burn them.
4. In order not to fight insects in the future, when the buds begin to bloom, it is recommended to spray the plantings with Bordeaux liquid.
5. A good prophylaxis against caterpillars that eat leaves on gooseberries will be the treatment with "Karbofos" and "Aktellik" in early spring.
6. Finding out which caterpillars on the gooseberry ate the leaves, how to deal with them and prevent their appearance, we note that it is recommended to cut branches in the fall, and also to collect and burn fallen leaves. Another useful procedure is soil loosening.

What caterpillars eat gooseberry leaves?

Various pests can attack fruit shrubs, and the most dangerous are caterpillars, which need nutrition, therefore, they eat up the leaves. If green caterpillars or other insects eat gooseberries, then it would not hurt to identify them in order to deal with them as quickly as possible.

1. Gooseberry sawfly.
   In the caterpillar stage, insects can be aquamarine or bright green with black dots. The larvae appear on the back of the leaves in May and are very voracious. In a couple of days, they can eat all the leaves on the bush. In two weeks, a pupa is formed, and in July a butterfly will fly out of it.



2. Gooseberry moth.
   If the caterpillars on the gooseberry have eaten the leaves, it is important to know how to deal with them, otherwise they will destroy the bushes.This pest lays eggs when the bushes bloom and young shoots appear. Caterpillars are small green with a black head. You can spot them by the cobwebs that twine around the berries and foliage. Caterpillars overwinter on the ground surface.



3. Currant glass bowl.
   The butterfly lays eggs when buds form on the bush. White caterpillars appear from them, with a brown head. They do not eat leaves, but penetrate the shoots, destroying them from the inside.



4. Shoot aphid.
   A common pest that eats up young leaves. The larvae appear with the onset of warmth and feed on the sap of the plant. When insects fly out of them, they settle on the tops of young shoots and slow down their growth. As a result, the gooseberry does not grow well, and its buds appear late.



5. Moth.
   Dangerous caterpillars that completely eat gooseberry foliage. In winter, they hide under leaves on the ground, and in spring they begin their vigorous activity. Caterpillars pupate after flowering. After 3-4 weeks, butterflies appear, laying eggs on the back of the leaves, from which new caterpillars hatch.

Spray with infusions and decoctions for both control and prevention

Gardener Tips

Even if there are no obvious traces of pests on the gooseberry, it is better to play it safe and spray the plants with an infusion based on onion peel and tobacco. Take two hundred grams of onion husks and the same amount of fresh chopped onions and tobacco, pour a bucket of water. Put on fire, simmer the mixture for two hours. Then cool the resulting slurry, strain, add another bucket of water, add 30 grams of liquid soap. Well, actually spray the gooseberries. The solution will not harm either the plant or beneficial insects that come into contact with it.

Folk and chemical remedies will save the gooseberry from the invasion of caterpillars, only if you notice their appearance in time and carry out a series of treatments. And it is best to take preventive measures and not be afraid that pests will gnaw all the leaves and spoil the fruits.

Process plantings, taking into account the growing season

The best folk remedies

1) Next to the gooseberry, you can plant an odorous plant - a red elderberry, it is able to scare away caterpillars.

2) It is possible to pollinate plants with an elderberry solution: two hundred grams of ground flowers and shoots are bred in ten liters of hot water. The mixture should be infused for about two hours and can be used. The solution can be sprayed on the plant during and after flowering to destroy the caterpillars.

3) Fumigation can be carried out with the help of tobacco dust. On the leeward side, collect a "mountain" of dry garbage, on the top you place a couple of kilograms of tobacco dust. Fumigation should continue for about half an hour.

4) You can sprinkle the ground near the bushes with a mixture: one tablespoon of ground mustard, a faceted glass of tobacco dust and three hundred grams of wood ash.

5) You can spray the plants with a solution of one hundred grams of young spruce cones, filled with heated liquid. The solution is infused for five hours and the plants can be sprayed. Processing will be required once a week during the entire flowering period.

6) All home remedies work well when they are repeated regularly, loosening the soil near the plants, carrying out sanitary pruning and collecting spoiled fruits.

Gardeners reviews

Rita

Last summer I had bulging burgundy swellings on the leaves. This is a red-gall aphid. I sprayed "Fitover" on May 1, on May 12 there were clean leaves and blooms with might and main. "Topaz", it seems to me, will hardly help gooseberries, since it is a drug specifically for powdery mildew. And when it blooms, you cannot process it.

Andrey

Literally in 2-3 days, while I was not at the dacha, they ate all the gooseberry leaves. At first, he could not find the enemy either, it turned out that these were sawer larvae. Keep in mind, they have now devoured everything, went into the ground and pupated. In a month, large yellow flies will fly to lay eggs on new bushes.

Currant kidney mite

Currant kidney mite Damages black, less often red and white currants.
An adult tick is up to 0.3 mm long, worm-like, transparent, with two pairs of legs. Females hibernate in damaged kidneys. In spring, females lay eggs, from which larvae soon emerge. During budding and extension of flower brushes, young mites spread out. They climb into the buds that are being laid, suck the juice from them. This is where the mites reproduce. Damaged kidneys grow abnormally, taking on a spherical shape. Such buds are clearly visible after leaf fall. In the spring, damaged kidneys do not develop, they dry out. The berry yield is decreasing. In addition, the tick carries the terry virus (currant disease).

A tick spreads with planting material, and within the garden area - insects, rain, wind.

Control measures for currant kidney mites

• Cutting and burning branches with damaged buds in the fall or early spring before ticks start to spread. Planting currants with uninfected planting material.
• Before planting, currant cuttings can be disinfected by immersing them in water at a temperature of + 45 ... + 46 ° C for 12-13 minutes. With a significant infection of currants, the bushes are sprayed with sulfur preparations before flowering and again immediately after flowering.

Powdery mildew

Powdery mildew

Powdery mildew
The fungus infects gooseberries and currants. On the surface of leaves, shoots and fruits, it forms a dense gray felt bloom of mycelium and spores. Damaged leaves are deformed and dry up, the tops of the shoots are bent, the fruits stop growing and fall off or remain underdeveloped.

The mushroom hibernates on shoots and fallen leaves. In the spring, a lot of spores are formed on the overwintered mycelium, which are carried by the wind, insects and infect plants. Infection occurs throughout the growing season, therefore, multiple spraying is needed to protect the bushes. The development of the disease is facilitated by high air humidity, moderately warm weather, and excess nitrogen fertilizers. Potash and phosphorus fertilizers increase plant resistance to diseases.

Control measures for American powdery mildew

• Establishment of plantings with uninfected planting material. Cutting and burning affected shoots in autumn or early spring. Collecting and burning fallen leaves in autumn.
• Digging the soil in autumn or early spring with the incorporation of plant residues. Collection and destruction of diseased leaves and berries during the growing season.Spraying of bushes: in the spring during the period of bud swelling - with copper sulfate to destroy the spores formed on shoots and fallen leaves; when the first signs of the disease appear, but before the gooseberry bloom or after harvesting - with copper sulfate, azocene or topaz.
• For spraying bushes during the growing season, gardeners use an aqueous infusion of manure.
• One part of mullein manure is insisted in three parts of water for three days. The infusion is diluted with a triple amount of water. Spraying is carried out in the evening or in cloudy weather. When spraying in sunny weather, there may be leaf burns, and the bacteria that are in the infusion and kill the mycelium die from the sun's rays.

Terry black currant

Terry black currant

Terry black currant
The causative agent of the disease is a virus. It affects leaves, flowers, currant branches. In diseased plants, the leaves become small, narrow, three-lobed, asymmetrical. Shoots branch vigorously, the bush becomes thick. Parts of the flower acquire a threadlike shape, the ovary swells, the flowers dry out. The disease is transmitted with planting material and currant mites.

A warning

For the protection of currants, a whole range of measures is used: preventive, agrotechnical, mechanical, biological and chemical.

To prevent the spread of pests and diseases, purchased seedlings are kept in quarantine schools, and upon purchase, a quarantine certificate is checked.

Agrotechnical measures, including watering, weeding, feeding and pruning of plants, allow you to grow strong and healthy currants, pests attack it only during a breeding outbreak. And they also try to select varieties that are resistant to pests that live in the area.

Mechanical methods involve manually picking up and shaking off caterpillars, breaking off spider nests and leaves rolled into a tube, followed by their burning.

Biological methods are based on the use of natural enemies of pests: birds, amphibians, insects and microorganisms. The installation of nesting houses and bird baths in the garden will attract the gardener's first assistants - sparrows and tits, other insectivorous birds - to the garden.

Instead of chemical insecticides dangerous to humans, nowadays it is possible to use biological insecticides. Their action is based on the destructive action of fungi, viruses, entomopathogenic nematodes.

There are quite a few bioinsecticides suitable for the destruction of caterpillars: Aversectin-C, Avertin-N, Bitoxibacillin, Dendrobacillin, Lepidocid, Entobacterin, Nembact.

However, with a strong outbreak of caterpillar breeding, it is necessary to use chemical agents, which, although unsafe, but very quickly cope with pests: Aktara, Akarin, Aktellik, Apache, Bi-58 Novy, Inta-Vir, Fufanon-Nova.

The decision on how to process the currants when caterpillars appear, the gardener makes depending on the condition of the plant, the number of pests and the time of their appearance.

Gallic leaf aphid

Gallic leaf aphid

Gallic leaf aphid

Gallic leaf aphid

Gallic leaf aphid
Damages white and red, less often black currants. Adult aphids are small, yellowish, with red eyes. Eggs overwinter on the bark of the shoots. Aphids suck the sap on the underside of the leaves. On the upper side of the leaf opposite the feeding site of the aphids, red galls (swellings) are formed. The growth of shoots decreases, the yield decreases.

Control measures for leaf gall aphids

• The same as with the gooseberry aphid.

Gooseberry aphid

Gooseberry aphid

Gooseberry aphid

Gooseberry aphid
Damages gooseberries, black and golden currants. Adult aphids are pale green, ovoid-round, up to 2 mm long. Shiny black eggs overwinter on branches and shoots near the buds. During the swelling of the buds, larvae appear.Aphids suck the juice first from the buds, then from the leaves and green shoots. Damaged leaves are bent down, the shoots bend and stop growing. At the tops of the shoots, damaged leaves form dense clusters in the form of a lump. During the season, the aphid gives several generations. Winged aphids scatter, populating other bushes. In autumn, females lay overwintering eggs.

Gooseberry aphid control measures

• Pruning and burning shoot tips with aphid colonies.
• Spraying bushes before flowering and after picking berries with karbofos, kinmik-som or tobacco broth.

Currant glass

Currant glass

Currant glass
Damages currants and gooseberries. The butterfly has a wingspan of 25 mm. Its body is in dark blue scales, on the abdomen there are yellow transverse stripes: three in the female, four in the male. The wings are narrow, glassy-transparent. The caterpillar is creamy white with a brown head.

Generation is biennial. Caterpillars overwinter twice in currant and gooseberry shoots. During the flowering of black currants, the caterpillars gnaw a hole outward and pupate. Butterflies fly out 10-15 days after flowering currants. Females lay eggs one at a time or in small groups on the bark of branches. After hatching from the egg, caterpillars penetrate through cracks in the bark, through a bud, cut, wound in the middle of branches and shoots and gnaw holes in them from top to bottom up to 30-40 cm long. Damaged branches and shoots dry out.

White spot (septoria)

White spot (septoria)
The disease affects leaves, less often petioles, berries, currant and gooseberry shoots. On the leaves, the disease manifests itself in the form of small (up to 2-3 mm) rounded brown spots. Soon the spots turn white, a brown border forms along the edges. On the stems and petioles, the spots are oblong, on the berries - flat.

The mushroom hibernates on fallen leaves and on shoots. In May, spores scatter and primary infection of green leaves and shoots with them. During the summer, black dots of the fruit bodies of the fungus with spores form on the spots of diseased tissue. Spores spread by wind and rain, these spores produce a secondary infection of plants. With a strong development of the disease, the leaves fall prematurely, the plants weaken.

Control measures for septoria

• The same as with anthracnose.