Two years ago over half of my Saskatoons on my bush shriveled. At the time I thought it was a draught we were having. But then it happened again last year and upon closer examination I noticed a dot on a bunch of the fruitlets. Sure enough, there was a worm inside of them. It seems to only like the Saskatoons, they don’t bother the cherries nor apples.
This year I plan on spraying permethrin right after petal fall and on the soil where the curculio is waiting to emerge and climb the bush. I’m leaning towards Permethrin because I has very low toxicity for humans and degrades when exposed to sunlight. The fact that we get 18+ hours of sun during the summer ought to help. The curculio seems to have a very specific window of activity so I’m hoping that a single application at that time will knock the bejesus out of that horde. Heck if the fruit loss goes from 60% to just 20% I would call it a success.
Does this sound to be about the right approach?
Here’s a picture from last year:
