So, I have no pics but the damage I had looks just like what I’ve seen on the internet…long lines of damage on outside of the apple and lots of tiny holes with brown stuff pushed out of the holes.
I have 5 apple trees all with 50 feet of each other. My question is, is it possible to only have codling moth in only 1 tree? 1 was completed decimated but others very close to it had none at all.
Your thoughts?
My understanding is that CM makes a single tunnel to the seed cavity and causes rot from there, so only the center of the fruit is usually damaged by the time I harvest it.
Lots of holes could be apple fly maggot which often only strike redder or earlier ripening apples in an orchard. The only time I’ve seen them is in an orchard of 30 apple trees and they were only infesting a Kidd’s Orange Red apple.
Whatever it was only attacked the Gala and it happened early when the apples were nickle to quarter size. I saw lines on outside of apples going around the circumference, along with multiple tiny holes.
I also never saw any moths but I don’t know if they’re active during the day.
That makes perfect sense for AFM to go after Gala exclusively. I was always warned of them here in NY because they come later than spring and shouldn’t be affected by my low-spray spring schedule. Somehow in all the orchards I manage all these decades I’ve only seen them once a couple of years ago in Westchester NY. I noticed them and knocked them out with a single spray while they were still active in the fruit.
I didn’t spray anything last year on the apples because I was concentrating on defeating leaf curl in my peaches. It turned out not to matter when hail destroyed all my fruit anyway
Do you think a dormant oil spray would help for the AFM in apples?
Off the top of my head I am pretty sure that the larva climb out of the fallen apples and certainly no eggs are laid in the trees to suffocate. Dormant oil is usually only used for scale, mites and aphids. Nowadays people usually use hort oil that can be safely sprayed on leaves. They at least wait until leaves show some green to control those pests.
It would take multiple BT sprays to control them unless you use the fake apple coated with tangle foot method. That is the standard organic technique and requires probably 4 fake apples per tree, but I’m speaking from the memory of what I’ve read and not experience.
I manage some orchards with organic or mostly organic methods (some synthetic fungicide only) but I’m only truly expert at using conventional synthetic methods. No one likes spraying any kind of poison, but I believe their health risks to humans are highly exaggerated- their main problem is in industrial agriculture where there can be thousands of acres sprayed repeatedly with no wilderness buffers. Tons of pesticides in a monoculture.
It’s not typical for codling moth to burrow just under the skin at the surface of the apple. You may be seeing damage from European Apple Sawfly.
I don’t have any first-hand experience with this one. I believe you’re in Europe, so I suppose you might.
Need to dissect a damaged apple and determine the nature of the tunneling.
Insects that tunnel to the fruit core do not typically leave a lot of surface frass, it is mostly deposited in the core voids.
Codling moth larvae are laid on the skin of the apple throughout its growth. You can literally see the tiny, shiny egg if you look closely. Depending on the temperatures they hatch a week to ten days later and immediately begin eating their way into the core of the apple. I think they go through other instar there and then poop their way back to the surface of the apple, letting themselves down at night on threads. They finish maturing in the grass and duff on the ground, sometimes in the bark of the tree, and repeat the process, emerging at night.
I’ve been lucky the last couple of years controlling them with a combination of Spinosad and Spectracide Once and Done as labelled. I’m not sophisticated enough to know why this combination works but @Richard did comment once that the two different poisons use two different killing mechanisms. So if the left 'un don’t get 'em the right 'un might.
At least a few people around here are using heavy dormant oil sprays just before bud break, IIRC, and lighter oil sprays later in the early season and they claim that works for them, but I haven’t followed up to learn more.