For those who have tried codling moth traps, anything work particularly well? The kind where they drown in a molasses mixture, not the pheromone trap. This is the first year I’ve saved up plastic jugs ands and am wondering what size hole to cut or what molasses recipe works well.
This is my plan…YMMV.
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“Vinegar Traps” don’t work for me. They will catch a few moths (and probably attract a bunch more), but not enough to trap out all the fertilized females laying eggs. That would require lots of traps. Doing it right would require you to replenish the vinegar periodically throughout the season, too.
BTW, does anyone see this recipe on an authoritative site?
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I’m managing my daughter’s apple trees for the first time this year. I plan to buy one commercial trap and use it as an indicator as to when to spray. And also to judge effectiveness of spray.
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The best remedy I know of is the bug zapper. Once they are roasted by the zapper they can’t do much more! I plug mine in on-a timer set 1 hour before until after dawn and dusk. Also clear out most mosquitoes as an extra benefit. I start my zapper when fruits are about the size of a quarter about same time I apply first coat of Surround wp. Zapper controls moths and surround controls apple fly maggots
Dennis
Kent wa
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After watching the vid above from the miracle farms dude… i went to walmart and found some cheap containers… and some molasses.
My 5 trees that are producing fruit this year … each one has 2 traps in place now.
Hope that helps.
Stefan said to make the holes 1/4 inch.
That looked small to me… i made mine 5/16.
After drilling 4 holes in each trap… i used a chainsaw file to smooth it out a bit and ruf up the area around the hole so the CMs can get a grip to climb in.
Cut my molasses with about half water.
Those containers were 1 buck each.
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I remember hearing an apple orchard care presentation, and he put forth this idea of having a sacrificial tree, to which all of this particular pest would be drawn, and then having his chickens out underneath it to eat the larvae. I don’t know, but would that apply here? I think you use Kaolin clay on all the other trees except that one.
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Wow, Dennis! That’s a great idea!
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I’ll be curious to see if these are a success. Great idea, Trev. I wonder who else you’ll catch in those?
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If vinegar is a solution to moths in the home, could it also be a solution to moths in the orchard?
I know that the Japanese hang wood vinegar in their trees, and it repels birds.
Maybe wood vinegar would be a good solution to birds in an orchard, as well.
23:20 of this presentation
I would be grateful for first-hand experience with the end-result of the attractant traps for the coddling moth – did your apples stay worm-free?
I read somewhere that pheromone traps for Japanese beetles, while indeed catching lots of them, also attract them from the entire neighborhood so in the end you don’t reduce the damage. Anecdotally, a neighbor complained these beetles stripped her roses bare despite having the traps out. So, I am worried the same might be true of coddling moth.
(I can see how zappers may be effective but am concerned about the by-kill. Last year, we tried yellow sticky traps for cucumber bugs and had all sorts of bees and butterflies stuck on it.)
As I understand it, codling moth traps are for assaying the presence of mating adults, not for trapping them out. Pheromone traps do not attract bred females.
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I see, thanks.
Nice. We saved up 1/2 gallon milk jugs this winter. I hung about three dozen traps around my acre yard two days ago. About a third of those were on non-target trees like paw paws and medlar. Maybe a little zone defense will work? That said, I hope it works. Making a few dozen traps took me substantially less time than bagging and spraying surround did last year.
@PomGranny … and others… update on my results with molasses traps.
My Novamac apple… is my latest bloomer…
So… at the time I installed 2 molasses traps in each of my apple trees… all the other trees had some fruit set… and many of the fruits had bite marks already.
I checked my Early Mcintosh yesterday (FG2 my first to set fruit) and it still has some nice clean fruit on it… lots with bite marks… but some absolutely clean fruit. It seems the traps may have helped it.
Today I checked my Novamac good… it has lots of nickle, quarter size fruits on now.
Found not one with bite marks. Not one.
It set several fruit last year and by the time they were dime sized… all were covered in bite marks.
My Novamac is a small espellar tree on b9… so very easy to inspect it well.
I need to add more molasses/water to most of the traps… it does slowly evaporate over time.
My little Novamac has 20+ very clean pretty apples on after thinning…
All the extras that I removed… were all clean too.
Seems to be a very good sign for success with these molasses traps.
The BAD news is that this spring… I was so happy to have 5 apple trees blooming this year.
My Akane and Hudson Golden Gem finally had several blossom sets here in year 4 for them… and my Novamac in year 3 was covered in fruit spurs and blossoms…
Yes… that was great until Fire Blight showed up in my Gold Rush at first. I removed 5 or 6 fruit spurs and small branches from it… early on… then found a few hits in my HGG… and removed them…
A week later… rain and hot weather. Gold Rush is literally covered in FB strikes. HGG has a few more… and Akane has several too.
My little Novamac… i just removed 20+ fruit spurs from it that were blasted black/brown.
I expect it is doomed now… i only removed spurs… no big chunks of wood… except for he short stub of a central leader… it had 2 spurs with FB… and I removed them… and then cut off 8 inches of the leader twice… and a brown streak remained after both cuts.
This reminds me if all those years I tried to get other apple and pears established here… they would do well… until a year or two after they started blooming… then FB… then death.
About time for me to give up on apples.
They dont grow and produce good fruit without a lot of fuss (sprays, maintenance, etc).
TNHunter
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This is what fruit looks like on my other apple trees… that have lots of FB strikes… and had fruit set and sized up some before I added the molasses traps.
Are those bite marks from CM ?
What ever it was… did not bother my Novamac at all. It had traps b4 fruit set.
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That’s too bad, but sometimes one has to move on and try something else. It is much like when we pulled out 99% of our vineyeard. It was no good without constant spraying as it can get quite steamy here (warm and cold - lichens grow even on cars here) and often the grapes looked promissing until a week or two before the harvest and then everything went to hell. So when my partner’s dad who was ready to spray every other week (and spray everything else along with the vineyard 
) died, we had it ripped out and planted a food forest in its place. Much more fun, food and aesthetic value.
I am now planting some grapes from Russian and Ukrainian breedings that should be resistant. But only for eating.
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Started off with a hand pruner… then pruning saw… once you remove a few scaffold branches completely… a pretty apple tree is not so pretty anymore… and there were still fireblight spots higher up in the trees.
Ended up with my chainsaw.
Akane, HGG, Goldrush… terminated… hauled them way off down the road and tossed them in the woods.
A nice succeasful graft of myers royal limbertwig… on a limb tip that had several FB strikes. Its a goner now.
Below are some nice organic no spray HGG apples.
Keeping the Novamac espellar… but not sure how long it will live. Perhaps it will make a few good apples this year before it dies.
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It’s really disheartening when you have a nice graft growing . . . and then something happens ‘somewhere else’ on the branch and you have to take the graft - when it was not the problem! I had that happen, too. Kept chopping, chopping, chopping trying to get ahead of the fireblight, last year . . . Finally just pulled the tree out and burned it - fireblight, graft and ALL.
Trevor - where is your PC Trap recipe and instructions? OOPS . . . sorry! I forgot about the earlier post and video. Got it.
- Karen
@PomGranny … I did what Stefon from Miracle farms did (coddling moth trap) youtube vid earlier in this thread.
50% molasses 50% water.
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