Help! Grubs withcacoons eating our pines.

 Appreciate how to kill these parasites. We've had 3 book-leaf pine-trees for
20 yrs in the front yard and out here in Dubbo they do reasonabley well for
non-gardeners like myself. But in the last 10 days they have been attacked
by grubs which clothe themselves in a cacoon made from the pine-tree's
leaves.

There are 100s of these things suspended by a gossamer of thread, others
actively eating the foliage.

Any thoughts appreciated, thanks

Jason

 Great, thanx Bronwyn.

    It's local knowledge like that is priceless, as all the sites are
non-commital about pesticides. We've 3 CPs and 4 pencil pines, plus a couple
of other pines of a turquiose colour foliage. These pupae are wreaking havoc
on the CPs, I'll probably lose 2 of them. They are also on the other pines,
but in lessor numbers.

I dont think I'd get pines again, as they have suffered other less drastic
borer attacks regularly, one pencil pine was cut-off like a saw last year.
Come outside one morning and its half the height :-)
The butt-end had a nice circular channel eatern out of it.

Thanx again, Jason




foliage

bucket.

  

Spray them with Dipel.  

 

attacked

Thanx for that additional info. I note it is a bio product. A good
alternative provided 2 days is not a critical time delay,..with this attack,
there are so many, I'll use the Dipel as a follow-up a cou[;e of days after
an initial spray of Crawly cruncher.

Jason

 rainman@mailinator.com wrote:

This is good advice.  The things eating your pine trees are almost
certainly moth caterpillars, so dipel will probably deal with them
without poisoning the rest of the insect life on the trees - some of
which will be beneficial insects.

Tish