Gooseberry moth lifecycle

Adult moths lay eggs on currants and gooseberries. When the eggs hatch, larvae burrow into the fruit and begin feeding on the pulp. This discolors the fruit and causes it to drop prematurely. A single larva will feed on several berries. Berries may be held together by a silken thread. There is usually only one generation each year but, being invasive insects, the lack of natural predators may cause that to change.


Gooseberry moth controls

Handpick and destroy any larvae you see, or feed them to your chickens. Bacillus thuringiensis and spinosad can also be used against these pests. Treatments should be applied when fruit is first developing and again 10 days later.

Those black spots might not look like anything important, but this bacterial disease can also affect peppers, eggplant, groundcherries, and tomatillos, along with your tomatoes. Close cousin to the bacterial spot of almonds and practically impossible to differentiate from bacterial speck without a microscope, bacterial spot (Xanthomonas campestris pv. vesicatoria ) is perfectly capable of killing your tomato plants.

Bacterial spot symptoms

Symptoms of bacterial spot can appear on all life stages, from seedlings to mature plants, and on all aboveground plant parts. Bacteria enter through wounds and stoma. Infected younger plants can be completed defoliated by bacterial spot. Older plants exhibit insignificant looking water-soaked areas on mature leaves, usually near the bottom of the plant. making it easier to dismiss this disease. This would be a mistake.


Closer inspection of these lesions shows that they start out yellow or light green, turning dark brown or black. Older spots may be raised areas that average 1/3” across. Larger damaged areas may be seen at the margins (leaf edges). ​

Immature fruit can also be affected by bacterial spot. Bacteria enter through tiny hairs, called trichomes. Infected areas start out looking like tiny raised black dots which then become sunken or dimpled, and surrounded by a white halo, similar to bacterial canker. The halos eventually disappear as the spots get larger and become scabby. These fruits, if they are able to mature at all without rotting on the vine, are still edible. Simply cut out the diseased areas. Just be sure to dispose of the infected parts in the trash. Do not add them to your compost pile.


Controlling bacterial spot

Because these bacteria overwinter in infected plant debris, you can protect next year’s crops by clearing infected plant tissue out of your garden completely each fall. The disease can also appear on volunteer tomato plants, so watch rogue tomato plants closely for signs of infection. Splashing rain, irrigation water, and contaminated tools can also spread the disease, so avoid overhead watering and be sure to sanitize your garden tools regularly.


Since these bacteria need humidity and water droplets to survive, pruning for good air flow can go a long way toward preventing this disease.


If you are like me and save seeds from each year’s crops, be sure you don’t use seeds from an infected plant, as you will be perpetuating the disease. As always, only buy certified disease-free plants and seeds and always quarantine new plants. Fixed copper sprays can be used in areas where bacterial spot has been a significant problem, although there have been some cases of copper-resistant bacteria. Crop rotation can also be used to break this disease triangle.


Protect next year’s crops by tossing plants infected with bacterial spot into the trash and providing good air flow around future plants.

If you look closely, you might see tiny black dots emerging from those cracks. Those dots are fungal fruiting bodies, called pycnidia. If you look at pycnidia with a microscope, they are flask-shaped.  Pycnidia formation is followed by a different type of fruiting body, called perithecia. Perithecia are also black, but they are medium-sized and, if you watch, erupting with spores.


Spur blight lifecycle

Spur blight is spread by spores on wind, rain, and irrigation water. These spores are released each time wet weather occurs, even if that wet weather is your garden hose. If that infected water falls on or near young canes, newly forming buds, leaves, wounds, or stoma, infection can occur. Once inside, this disease spreads throughout the plant, overwintering in the lesions.


How to manage spur blight

Proper sanitation and pruning methods will go a long way toward preventing spur blight on your beloved raspberries. In late winter or early spring, before new canes emerge, remove all dead, diseased, or weak canes and put them in the trash, rather than the compost pile. Be sure to keep canes properly spaced for good air flow, and train them up trellising that allows canes to dry quickly and to make it easier for you to water your raspberry plants at ground level. You should also keep weeds away, as they complete for water and nutrients and reduce air flow around the canes. Unless a soil test has indicated a genuine need for fertilizer, avoid feeding your raspberries. The presence of too many nutrients causes plants to produce an abundance of vulnerable tissue.


As always, only buy certified, disease-free plants and place new plants in quarantine. In the case if severe infection, fixed copper or lime sulfur treatments may reduce lesion size and control internal infection if applied when new shoots are 8-10” long.


Believe me when I tell you that it is far easier to prevent spur blight than to treat it. And raspberries are worth the effort.

Symptoms appear more strongly in the second and third leaves, but are not likely in later growth. [Weird, right?] Unfortunately, the other symptoms include stunting and reduced fruit and runner production. Your strawberry crop can be reduced by nearly 20% because of vein banding. As soon as another virus takes hold, you can lose your crop entirely.


Strawberry vein banding vectors

Strawberry vein banding is generally carried by strawberry aphids. It can also be transmitted by  taking grafts from infected plants. Strangely enough, coming into contact with dodder can also spread the disease, but sap from an infected plant cannot. Stranger still, a clone of the vein banding virus can infect turnips, a completely unrelated species.


Strawberry vein banding control

In a word, you can’t. Strawberry vein banding can be prevented by only installing certified disease-free plants, placing those plants in quarantine when they first arrive, and removing any plants that you suspect are infected. 


Since aphids can fly at certain points in their development, the threat of this and other viruses is constant. All you can do, besides the preventive measures listed above, is monitor your plants for signs of aphids and control them as well as you can. Insecticides and insecticidal soaps work against aphids, but your strawberry plants need honey bees and other pollinators to produce fruit. Those insecticidal controls will impact your helpers, too, so they should be avoided while plants are flowering.


Closely monitoring your strawberry plants and keeping other plants that might host aphids at a distance can go a long way toward preventing vein banding in your strawberry plants.

Infected with only one of these diseases, strawberry plants often remain symptomless. It isn’t until  a second virus enters the game that symptoms begin to appear. These other viral diseases include strawberry vein banding, crinkle, mottle, mild yellow edge, and beet pseudo yellows. 


Symptoms of strawberry pallidosis

Similar to other strawberry viral diseases, symptoms of strawberry pallidosis include stunting, significantly reduced fruit and runner production, and older leaves turning red or purple. An additional symptom of strawberry pallidosis is that roots are brittle and show fewer rootlets.


Managing strawberry pallidosis

Unlike many other strawberry viral diseases, pallidosis is spread by whiteflies. This makes controlling the disease more difficult. Management strategies are the same for all strawberry viral diseases: only install certified disease-free plants, quarantine new plants, remove infected plants, and control whiteflies as much as you can.

Strawberry mottle is one of several viruses that can affect strawberries. Appearing on its own, the damage tends to be relatively isolated. All too often, however, more than one virus appears at the same time. Collectively, this condition is called virus decline and it can eliminate any chance at enjoying a sweet, juicy strawberry from your garden, no matter how well you care for your plants.


Vectors of strawberry mottle disease

Strawberry mottle is carried by insects, most commonly by strawberry, melon, and cotton aphids. This virus is also spread by vegetative propagation of infected plants. Unlike the strawberry mild yellow edge virus, which is retained in an aphid’s gut for its lifetime, the strawberry mottle virus can only be transmitted for 2 or 3 hours after an aphid or other insect has fed on an infected plant. This makes outbreaks remain relatively localized. [Ten feet away probably looks impossible to a flightless bug that is only 1/8” long.]


Symptoms of strawberry mottle

As insects pierce plant cells to suck out the sugary sap, viruses move from the insect’s saliva to the plant. As viruses tend to do, these pseudo-lifeforms start reprogramming a plant’s cells to produce more viruses, which then clog the works. ​

Strawberry mottle first appears on young leaves as smaller than normal leaves that may also show yellow distorted areas. Plants may be stunted and they certainly produce less fruit and runners than they might otherwise. As the disease progresses, symptoms become more severe, with older leaves turning red.


Strawberry mottle management

Strawberry mottle is more likely when plants are left in place over the winter, but that doesn’t mean you have to rip out your plants every year. [Note: don’t actually rip plants out of the ground. Instead, cut them off at soil level to leave valuable soil microbes in place.]


As always, to reduce the likelihood of strawberry mottle appearing in your garden, only buy certified disease-free plants and always place new plants in quarantine. As much as possible, try to control aphids around strawberry plants. If a plant becomes infected, remove it.

Strawberry mild yellow edge virus is a long name for a disease that can reduce your strawberry crop by as much as 30%. Strawberry mild yellow edge virus often appears at the same time as the mottle virus, both of which are transmitted by some aphid species. Nematodes may also add raspberry ringspot virus to the mix.


Strawberry mild yellow edge virus symptoms

As with most viral diseases, stunting is a common symptom of strawberry mild yellow edge virus. Older leaves may turn bright red, but leaves around the crown nearly always exhibit yellow margins or edges, hence the name. These yellowed areas eventually die and turn brown. Leaf cupping may also occur.


Since these symptoms look a lot like water-stress, fertilizer burn, overly acidic pH, boron toxicity, or bad weather, it is important to rule those things out before deciding on a plan. Once strawberry mild yellow edge virus has made an appearance in your garden, there are steps you can take to minimize the damage.


How to manage strawberry mild yellow edge virus

Even though the fruits of infected plants are still edible, plants infected with strawberry mild yellow edge virus should be removed to reduce the chance of spread. Aphids carrying the strawberry mild yellow edge virus are disease vectors for life. The only thing to do if the disease is present is to use insecticidal soap on each and every aphid that might be a carrier. Just be sure to do this at a time when honey bees and other pollinators will not be attending the flowers. Common lambsquarters and other Chenopods can also carry this disease, so keep these plants away from your strawberry plants.


This disease is most common when plants are grown using a matted-row method. The matted-row system allows parent plants to send out runners, or daughter plants, which will produce fruit the following spring. This is a very productive method that has been around for a long time. It gets its name because the runners end up intertwined, creating a mat. The only problem with the matted-row system is that it means plants are in place for a longer period of time. This makes infection more likely.


As always, place new plants into quarantine until you are sure that they are disease-free.

Strawberry crinkle virus symptoms

Wilting, reduced runner production, smaller fruit, deformed and/or streaked flower petals, and crinkled leaves are all symptoms of strawberry crinkle virus. Vein spotting may also be seen, as well as lesions on petioles (leaf stems) and stolons. Infected plants may appear top-heavy, exhibiting a form of epinasty. These symptoms can vary in intensity.


Strawberry crinkle virus management

Since bees are so important to strawberry formation, insecticides are generally not an option against the aphids that carry this disease. Use these tips to prevent strawberry crinkle virus from impacting your strawberry crop:

• only install certified disease-free plants
• place new plants in quarantine
• monitor for aphids and wipe or spray them off with a garden hose
• remove infected plants completely and immediately

Hopefully, your strawberry plants will never become infected with the crinkle virus. Until we figure out a sustainable way to get rid of aphids, well, be on the lookout.

Avocado lace bug lifecycle 

Yes. That’s what I said. Poop. Female avocado lace bugs lay their eggs and then smear the area with a sticky, tar-like substance that looks like poop. Under that protective layer, nymphs molt 5 times as they grow before emerging as adults. Avocado lace bugs have several generations each year and all developmental stages can be present at any one time.


Avocado lace bug damage

Avocado lace bugs are sap suckers. As such, they pierce the underside of leaves and siphon away nutrient rich fluids. This feeding, while trivial in small numbers, can cause stippling. As feeding progresses, other symptoms appear, such as leaf tip burn that looks like salt damage, leaf discoloration, and early leaf drop. Large infestations can result in defoliation, sunburn damage, and reduced fruit production.


As in any case where plant cells are pierced, this feeding also provides points of entry for fungal diseases, such as anthracnose.


Avocado lace bug control

Natural predators should keep avocado lace bug populations in check. These beneficial insects include jumping spiders, lacewing larvae, lady beetles, and predatory mites and thrips, as well as parasitic wasps.


If avocado lace bug populations reach troublesome numbers, keep your trees healthy with a thick layer of mulch, good drainage, and regular irrigation. Insecticidal soaps are somewhat helpful against avocado lace bugs.


Be on the lookout for this pest. If you suspect your tree is hosting avocado lace bugs, contact your local County Extension Office right away. As always, place new plants and bare root trees in quarantine before adding them to your garden.

Damage caused by Uhler’s stink bugs

Uhler’s stink bugs eat fruit by piercing the surface and sucking out the sugary sweet juice. At first, those feeding spots may look like tiny, translucent blue-green dimples. If you cut into the fruit, you will see the fruit has turned into grayish white pithy tissue that doesn’t look the least bit appetizing. These pests can also transmit tomato bacterial spot and create points of entry for other pests and diseases.


Uhler’s stink bug controls

Insecticides are ineffective against stink bugs, but that may be a good thing. Instead of spraying chemicals that kill off beneficial insects, a healthy, biodiverse garden will likely be home to assassin bugs, parasitic wasps and flies, such as the tachinid fly (Trichopoda pennipes) and the Trissolcus basalis wasp, which will parasitize stink bug eggs. Birds, spiders, toads, and other insect eating critters will also help keep stink bug populations down.


Your best stink bug management program simply involves walking around and looking for them, hand-picking them and depositing them in a container of soapy water or feeding them to your chickens. You may have to be quick, as stink bugs tend to scramble to the opposite side of a twig or branch if they sense someone is looking for them. You will need to monitor for stink bugs from the time buds emerge until the end of the harvest season.


These pests are often found overwintering in common mullein, curly dock, and Russian thistle. If stink bugs have been a serious pest in the past, pull mulch away from fruit trees before green fruit appear. After the harvest, simply push the mulch back into place.

Cytospora canker symptoms

The first sign of Cytospora canker is often the random die off or flagging of tree or shrub branches. Closer inspection reveals cankers on stems and branches. These cankers tend to be long and narrow and may or may not  be sunken or discolored. These fungi grow so rapidly that discoloration and sunken areas do not always have time to form, but the bark may split along the edge of the cankers as the tree tries to defend itself. These cracks allow for the formation of a callus that blocks the fungi from entering. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. In some cases, girdling occurs without any visible cankers. Gumming may also occur. Gumming is when stems and fruit ooze out a sticky sap. This is another form of tree defense.


If you cut into a diseased stem, you may notice discoloration and a funky smell. If you see tiny black spots, you are looking at fruiting bodies of the fungi.


Cytospora canker prevention and control

The easiest way to prevent Cytospora canker is to keep your trees and shrubs healthy in the first place. Healthy plants are less likely to become stressed enough to be vulnerable to infection by fungal spores in the first place. ​

Since drought and flooding are the most common conditions that make trees susceptible to Cytospora canker, regular irrigation during summer and proper drainage in wetter months can prevent infection. These other tips can help prevent Cytospora canker:

• prune for structure and good airflow and to prevent broken branches
• avoid digging around tree and shrub roots
• prevent injuries from weedwackers and mowers
• control insects, such as scale and borers
• select species suitable to your microclimate
• conduct a soil test to see if potassium deficiency or other nutrient imbalances are negatively impacting your tree(s)
• whitewash bark to prevent sunburn damage
• space plants at proper distances from one another
• only install healthy, disease-free plants

Once infection occurs, remove any affected stems and branches by cutting close to, but not damaging, the branch collar. Be sure to disinfect your cutting tools with bathroom cleaner or ethyl alcohol between each cut. Then apply a fungicide to each cut. Do not use any other wound dressing, as these treatments can trap spores and moisture where you least want them.


There are no known chemical controls for Cytospora canker, so keeping those trees and shrubs healthy is your best bet.

The lily leaf beetle (Lilioceris lilii) earns its name by devouring lilies of every shape and size. Native to Europe, this pest made its way to Canada in 1945 and reached the U.S. in 1992. While they may not yet be in your neighborhood, they might. So it’s a good idea to know what they look like and how to control them - just in case.


Lily leaf beetle description

The bright reddish-orange wing cover of lily leaf beetles makes them easy to spot. Black legs, head, and antennae stand out in clear contrast against green leaves. Adults average 1/2” long.


Eggs are irregularly shaped and laid in rows. At first they are tan colored. Just before they hatch, they turn bright red. Larvae look like tiny brown, orange, yellow, or even greenish slugs with black heads.


Lily leaf beetle lifecycle

Eggs are laid on host plants, usually on the underside of leaves. After hatching, larvae feed for 2 - 3 weeks before dropping to the ground to pupate in the soil. Adults overwinter in sheltered areas that may not necessarily be near host plants. In spring, they emerge and mate. Each female might lay 250-450 eggs.


Damage caused by lily leaf beetles

Both adults and larvae feed on buds and leaves. Very often, nothing is left but stems. Lily leaf beetle larvae have a nasty habit of collecting their own excrement on their backs. This is believed to be a defense mechanism. I’ll bet it works, too!


Lily leaf beetle control

Hand-picking is the best control method. Severe infestations may warrant neem oil or spinosad application.

Grapes and pomegranates are under attack by grape mealybugs.

Conifer seed bug lifecycle

Adult female conifer seed bugs lay 200 eggs in rows, usually along needles, leaf midribs, or stems of host plants. In spring, the eggs hatch and nymphs go through five developmental stages, or instars, before reaching adulthood. In North America, there is only one generation a year, but two or more generations have been seen in Mexico and southern Europe.


Insecticides are not recommended, though they can be used as a last resort against heavy nymph infestations. It is better to avoid using broad spectrum insecticides. Provide pollen and water for natural predators. Some tachinid flies have been known to parasitize conifer seed bug eggs. Spiders, assassin bugs, and birds also feed on conifer seed bugs.

The fungi responsible for take all disease, Gaeumannomyces graminis, is found in the soil. It enters young plant roots and can often be seen as dying patches in a lawn or field.


Take all disease symptoms

The fungus enters the xylem and blocks the flow of water, causing stunting, yellowing, and reduced tillering. Tillering refers to the way lateral shoots emerge from the base of the stem, a common growth style of cereals. Infected plants mature faster than normal and have bleached seed heads and blackened roots and crowns.


Preventing take all disease

There are no effective chemical treatments against take all disease available to gardeners. There is a seed treatment that shows promise, so be sure to get certified disease-free seeds from reputable suppliers. Excessive liming and nutrient imbalances exacerbate this disease. If take all disease appears in your lawn, there isn’t much you can do besides improving drainage. If it appears in your barley, corn, millet, rice, sorghum, triticale, or wheat, the best thing you can do is rotate crops. Oats and rye, while cereal grains, are not susceptible to take all disease. 


Take all disease can build up in the soil, particularly in monoculture crops that are grown in the same place year after year. ​

There is one soil amoeba that feeds on the take all disease fungi. This unique protozoa is a type of vampyrellid. Vampyrellids are affectionately known as soil vampires because of the way they leave puncture marks in their victims.

Sunblotch control

Once a tree is infected with sunblotch, it must be removed and destroyed. This means that prevention is your only real course of action. Sunblotch can be transmitted through infected pollen, seeds, and budwood. You can’t do anything about infected pollen if the source is on someone else’s property, but you can invest in disease-free bare root trees. You can also make sure that any grafting projects you take on involve only healthy trees. And be sure to sanitize your garden tools after working on potentially infected trees with bathroom cleaner or a 9:1 ratio of water to bleach.

European fruit lecanium scale might be a long name, but these garden pests can make short work of your pomegranates, citrus, and olives.

European fruit lecanium scale description

European fruit lecanium scale is a soft scale insect. This means the shiny brown convex cover is not as hard as armored scale covers. You can identify European fruit lecanium scales because the brown cover has several ridges on it, while other soft scale insects do not. 


European fruit lecanium scale lifecycle

European fruit lecanium scale larvae are normally found on twigs and small branches. As temperatures begin to rise in spring, they develop the telltale dome-shaped cover. Adult females fill the space under their cover with eggs and then they die. When the eggs hatch, the nymphs, or crawlers, come out from underneath the scale covers and hide out on the underside of leaves. By late July or August, these pests migrate to fruit. There can be two generations each year and most of the insects present will be in the same life stage.


Damage caused by European fruit lecanium scale

When European fruit lecanium scale larvae feed, they attach themselves to the outside of twigs and fruit and pierce the surface. This causes cosmetic damage as well as providing points of entry for other pests and diseases. Also, European fruit lecanium scale feeding results in the excretion of honeydew (sugary bug poop), which sooty mold fungi find delightful. The only exception is that scale feeding on pomegranates does not result in honeydew deposits. Instead, tiny piles of sugar are seen. These sugar piles are easily brushed off of twigs and fruit.


European fruit lecanium scale controls

Natural enemies are the best controls for European fruit lecanium scale. Twicestabbed lady beetles, steel blue lady beetles, and lacewings will all help fight soft scales. You can also wrap tree trunks with sticky barriers to remove the protection (and disease-carrying potential) provided by ants. 


Finally, prune trees for good air flow and structure to keep trees healthy.

​Adult cigarette beetles only live for 2 to 6 weeks and they do not eat. They can fly, however. And cigarette beetle larvae are surprisingly destructive.

Cigarette beetles (Lasioderma serricorne) favor tobacco, but they can also damage your cereal grains,  and oilseeds, such as olive, peanut, soybean, and sunflower. Cigarette beetles will also feed on dried fruit, herbs and spices, such as paprika, cumin, and sage, flour, pet food, and your favorite books, given the chance.


Cigarette beetle description

These tiny brown beetles look almost identical to drugstore beetles and furniture beetles, with a more humpbacked profile. If you look very closely, using a hand lens, you can see that cigarette beetles have a distinctive club at the end of their antennae. ​

Cigarette beetles are tiny. Eight of them could stand, end-to-end, across a dime. But don’t let their diminutive size fool you. 


Cigarette beetle lifecycle

Adult female cigarette beetles lay 30 to 100 eggs in and around preferred foods. As soon as the larvae hatch, they start feeding and moving around. After feeding and pooping, larvae enter a pupal stage in cocoons made from the foods they infested, making them difficult to see.


While insecticides are effective against cigarette beetles, you are better off tossing out infested materials. Vacuuming and pheromone traps can also help control these tiny pests.

Plum pox symptoms

There are multiple strains of the plum pox virus, but the results are always unfortunate for stone fruit trees. Identifying this disease can be tricky. In some cases, the symptoms can be very subtle. They can vary by virus strain and host cultivar.  Generally speaking, leaf veins turn yellow and light green or yellow rings may appear on leaves, fruits, and pits. These symptoms may disappear during the heat of summer, only to return in autumn. Leaves may also exhibit crinkling, curling, and puckering. Cultivars with large, showy flowers may become variegated. Fruit may be deformed, turn brown, or develop concentric colored rings. premature fruit drop may also occur.


Unfortunately, these symptoms do not usually appear until the infection has been present for 2 or 3 years. During this time, several other nearby trees can easily become infected.


Plum pox transmission

The plum pox virus can travel long distances on infected plant material and insects. Grafting infected scions can transfer the infection to healthy trees. Several aphid species can carry this virus. 


How to avoid plum pox

If you only buy certified disease-free bare root stock and other fruit and nut trees, odds are pretty good that plum pox will not find your garden {assuming you don’t live where plum pox is already a problem). Placing new plants in quarantine and doing the best you can to control aphids will also help prevent this disease. Efforts are underway to develop resistant cultivars, but those trees are not yet available.


Plum pox may not kill fruit trees, but it can reduce production so much that you will probably end up replacing the trees anyway. Infected trees often produce fruit that is misshapen and more acidic than healthy fruits.


If you suspect plum pox, please contact your local County Extension Office or Department of Agriculture immediately.

Mid to late summer, spores of this fungal disease infect red and purple raspberries. Unlike yellow rust, which produces yellow to orange pustules in early to mid-summer, late leaf rust pustules are generally not seen until mid to late summer.


Late leaf rust symptoms

​The first symptom of late leaf rust (Pucciniastrum americanum) is small yellow (chlorotic) spots on the top of older leaves. These spots generally start to appear in lower portions of the plant, slowly spreading upward, into younger leaves. As the disease progresses, reproductive uredinia form on the underside of leaves, containing masses of spores. ​

Late leaf rust lifecycle

Spores of this disease overwinter in white spruce and infected raspberry canes. Spores can also be spread by wind, so the health of your upwind neighbor’s raspberries can have a direct impact on yours.


Late leaf rust control

Like other rusts, late leaf rust is best avoided by pruning plants for good airflow and avoiding overhead watering. Also, be sure to remove spent canes each year. If any of those canes have been infected, removing them will break the disease triangle.


​Fixed copper sprays may help prevent and treat late leaf rust.