At the end of last year my 3-year-old apple tree got a hole from a boring insect. I tried to kill it by sticking a wire up into the hole, but it seems I failed. Now that it’s spring I noticed more shavings coming out of the hole, and the wood above the hole felt hollow. Being curious, I cut it open with my knife only to reveal the entire half of the truck has been hollowed out! (see pics below).
The tree itself is waking up now, and even above the damage is showing green buds and starting to leaf out. So my question is – what do I do with this? Do I top off the tree right below the damage? Let it keep growing as is? Try to patch this gaping hole somehow?
Yeah so I ended up cutting off the top – the damage went way up even beyond the photo. Total length of the tunnel was like 10 inches! At the very top I found a beetle larva, which was satisfyingly squished. It looks like it was a round-headed apple borer.
Reading that the channel @key88sf had in his tree was 10 inches makes me think this one could be well over the inch that I was able to poke this thicker wire up. I found the hole last night as the sun was setting. Tonight I’ll be finding a better wire to do some stabbing with.
Startlingly huge. Thankfully the cut out section is almost the entirety of the damage and the tree is in good health. Using a thinner gauge wire I probed around but was not able to find much more void space. Now I’m trying to go over every inch of my trees looking for additional damage. This one was at least 3 ft from the ground which is apparently not the norm for apple borers. Hopefully I don’t see many more of their ilk.
