Lets Talk cicadas damage


Been finding them for a few days down here. Caught this guy on the railing.

So, Surround can be effective against cicadas?? Any tips/tricks? When, how much, how often?

I don’t think anyone here has direct experience with it. I will be spraying in a week or two and we can all see how it does. The only thing I would say now is to target the bottoms of the pencil to fat pencil sized branches. They have a fairly narrow size range of limbs they go after, and always on the bottoms of side shoots, never on the trunks or shoot tops.

I will also wrap all of my young trees with row cover. I already have deer fencing around them, I can just wrap the row cover around the fencing.

The egg laying doesn’t start for awhile, I saw some neighbors wrapped some trees weeks ago but not a very good idea… you can wait until the cacaphony starts, that is the mating call. You need some mating to get some egg laying…

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Yeah. I haven’t even SEEN one yet (except some I dug up a couple weeks ago while turning over a planting bed).

My trees smaller than ~7’ tall I will wrap completely. I have a few ideas for the others, including wrapping each scaffold of an open-center tree separately since the entire tree is too large to do.

Will they hit cane fruits at all? Should I wrap my raspberries?

My memory is they like non-vertical woody shoots only. So raspberries should be fine.

The way the nymphs get to the ground is they just fall. I think that is why the mother lays the eggs on undersides of angled branches only… easy drop point.

Some 30 years ago I experienced egg laying on vertical of 'feathered whips" of apple trees.
All survived.

Not the brood “X”.

does anyone have a recommendation on a bug netting for a small tree? Planted a dogwood for the wife for mothers day and would hate to lose it to the cicadas. was thinking something like this but its just a guess.

I ordered this just in case any cicadas arrive here. I will use it over berry bushes regardless.

I found this in one of the branches of a Goldrush apple that had been damaged lat year by cicadas. I am wondering if the black growth is the response of the tree or some additional infection that took advantage of the cicada-induced damage.

That looks like a Eastern tent caterpillar egg mass to me
Not sure ? If so , it should rub off , like glued on styrofoam
They would’ve already hatched out by now.

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Yes I imagine the trees are pretty cut up 17 year cicada's woke up hungry. Expect heavy fireblight in pears in those regions following cicada.

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I can confirm that. Never saw fire blight before the cicada damage. Also, branches are breaking left and right from fruit load where damage is.

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@Robert

Your pears will bloom much more as well. The juvenile cicada seem to bring the young pears into bearing fruit in my experience. We are along way from understanding the relationship but disease , fruiting. And branch breaking are part of it. Those new branches tip are weakened and I lost feet of growth exactly as you described.

I have noticed that in a lot of damage types. A damaged fruit trees first instinct is to reproduce. Makes me wonder if girdling really works.

Thanks for the advice

I heavily pruned the hazels after the cicadas but the peaches were more mildly pruned. We’ll see how well they can hold fruit.

I would recommend removing all cicada damage as soon as possible. Can be spread over 3yrs. ?
But sooner is better .

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