Triazicide
I see some trees with tanglefoot coated paper on them. In the real hard hit areas they will fill a trap in a day.
My 2 cents on Lanternflies: I think the threat to most fruits is over stated. Across the street there is (was) a large tree of heaven in my neighborās yard. It was carpeted with them, and a 10ā radius under the tree was black from mold growing on honeydew. The bark peeled right off the tree. All this in a week or two. 30 feet away are my fruit trees, didnāt see a single Lanternfly on them. However, a nearby fig friend had a lot of Lanternflies on his fig trees (many nearby tree of heaven), but I donāt know if they were causing damage. Local vineyards have reported a lot of trouble, too.
Man, thatās good to hear. Some articles make it sound like pestilence straight out of the Book of Revelations. Penn State is known for excellent fruit science department so they may come up with something.
Do they fly to new trees or have to crawl up the trunk? If the latter, Tanglefoot sounds good.
Looks like mantises eat them.
I collected about 100 mantis oothecas over the winter, they eat stink bugs also. If anyone wants to find some look in unmowed areas with good sun exposure, usually on 1/8"-1/4" stems.
Am I understanding that the lantern flies killed the tree? It seems that controlling that host plant would be very helpful and maybe the actual presence of the lantern flies would be enough to diminish the amount of the tree of heaven. I have a hard time not getting anxious about invasive species; most of our land is covered with them and I feel powerless: honeysuckle, autumn olive, callery pear, the non-native kind of blackberry, plus surely many more invasive plants I donāt even recognize. Part of me says I canāt worry about them and the other part of me wants to try to control them.
Yup, thatās the host plant in China. One invasive pest killing another? Seems ok.
I agree! Iād feel differently seeing the tree of heavens wiped out than I feel about seeing all our local ash trees slowly dying due to the EABs.
TOH is hard to kill, cutting a tree results in the whole root system suckering so if SLF can top kill TOH they might make the problem much worse. PA recommends killing 90% of TOH trees in infested areas, but leaving some male trees to attract and trap SLF in the future.
One way to kill TOH which limits root suckering is to hack the trunk with a hatchet and squirt herbicide into the cuts āhack and squirtā in late summer after the sap has stopped flowing so the herbicide will travel down to the roots and kill them before they can sucker. Otherwise the whole area needs to be mowed regularly for several years (and suckers pulled from areas that canāt be mowed), or the suckers need to be treated with herbicide after the tree is cut.
Well they finally found me. While clearing out some Tree of Heaven weed trees from my tree lines today I found hundreds of adult Spotted Lantern Flies. Killed as many as I could, little buggers are pretty darn quick! Didnāt notice any in the orchard, going to give it a thorough looking over tomorrow. Not real happy about my discovery.
Iām in Northampton County PA, closest town would be Cherryville. Northern most edge of the Lehigh Valley.
Do they prefer TOH enough that we are unlikely to see them in their absence?
That seems to be what they are attracted to the most here. I did walk the orchard today, found a few on all of my stone fruit(apricot, cherry, peach and plum) none on the pome fruit. Found a bunch on the maple trees too. Strangely enough they seem to like utility poles and the sunny sides of my out buildings. I know of a few people in the area having major problems on grapes. Its amazing how I went from seeing none, to what must be thousands in one season. Unfortunately , Iām getting the feeling that they are here to stay.
The PennState Extension just published their results on some insecticide trials they have been doing on the SLF⦠https://extension.psu.edu/updated-insecticide-recommendations-for-spotted-lanternfly-on-tree-fruit?j=268406&sfmc_sub=43216378&l=159_HTML&u=5275059&mid=7234940&jb=4
A new article on Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-02/america-isn-t-ready-for-the-lanternfly-invasion
Iām thinking of taking out my 2 peach trees since I donāt spray for PC/OFM so Iām already not really getting any good fruit from them.
There is an interesting line in the article about how wine made from grapes on vines that had Lanternfly attacks was āredolent of cabbage.ā I wonder if that was really related and if there could be some impact on fruit flavors if these pests canāt be controlled for completely.
The way the eggs can be laid on anything sure makes it seem like these things might spread very fast.
I noticed bunch of these in my maple tree. Donāt know what to expect yet. Iām sure another horrible pest to deal withā¦
Call the Penn State Extension Susu. Tell them you have them, then smash them.
Our county is already in the quarantine zone. So they know about it. I entered in my zip code on their website.
Do we know which fruit trees or bushes these donāt attack? I might try to plan my plantings around these if they are as bad as some of the newer nasties like SWD. Theyāve already spread to parts of Lancaster, PA where Iām at, so only a matter of time before I see some.
Thereās a long list of stuff they like. The ones I recall are grape, peach, apple.