Last autumn as we were looking forward to our feijoa crop, we discovered, for the first time, a guava moth infestation. We’ve been lucky to have avoided it thus far. To give yourself a fighting chance of getting on top of guava moth and other caterpillar infestations, you need to start dealing with it now – springtime. So this is a little extra post on the ideas we have.
This is how the guava moth works (thanks to the Feijoa Appreciation group FB page)…
“The basics of the guava moth life cycle are that moths lay their eggs on the surface of fruit. Within 24 hours of hatching, the larvae burrow inside and start eating. Once mature, they crawl out, drop to the ground on a silken thread, and make a cocoon out of soil and spit. Adult moths emerge, find each other using pheromones, and mate. The whole cycle takes around eight weeks.”
Rob advocates a multi-pronged approach to guava moth and other caterpillar infestations. Here are our suggestions:
All of these methods work for codling moth in apples and pears and white butterfly caterpillars on your brassicas too, so actually really worth giving some, if not all, a go!
Good luck!
Jan and Rob
5 Responses
How about the caterpillars I very much appreciate. I plant cabbages just to get butterflies .
We seem to be killing and killing. There may be other species, relying on the moths.
Perhaps only noticeable after years. As an example,Iread that the seaweed disappeared because the snapper was overfished.snapper eat sea urchins, sea urchins eat seaweed. No snapper ,too many sea urchins eating too much seaweed.🙃
Do you have anything to stop passion fruit hoppers, last year they decimated my passion fruit plant. I want to plant a new one but I need to keep them under control.
Hi Lorraine Either Neem Tree oil applied in the evening three times with three days in between each application, or Aquaticus Bugtrol which has fish oil and pyrethrum in it and also best applied in the evening. Both are safe and effective. All the best 😊
what about the sticky commercial pheromone traps on cardboard hung in nearby trees -seem to work as moths get caught on them
Hi John Yes, they catch moths, but pheromone is the chemical signals emitted by females to attract a mate so these traps only catch males. The females are still free to lay eggs and perpetuate the cycle. They’re often used just to indicate to growers that a particular moth species is flying, not necessarily as mitigation. Our codling moth trap will catch both females and males though.