crop: fondante d'automne

These have started falling, which prompted me to pick and store them properly. Today's crop weighed 5 kg, in addition to 1 kg spoiled on ground and 1 kg sold at local shop, making yield just 7 kg or just under 15 lbs in total, rather more in total than last year. The fruit has not coloured as much as last year, looking back, which has been the case with the early pears (which had less flavour than usual). Small amount of superficial tortrix moth damage.

Moths

Moth picking will be a tedious task for now on. The various kinds of fruit-boring moths have not been a problem to date, but last year there was a sudden increase which resulted in a small degree of fruit loss.

Spraying at this stage would be a complete waste of time, as the larvae have by now wound themselves up in their leafy cocoons, so the only effective control is to hand-pick them. Look for damaged, curled leaves, leaves/blossom stuck together and dark dots of 'frass' which are the droppings of the grubs. Unfurling the leaves will reveal a sticky web, and eventually a green grub. 

After a while it gets easier to spot them, and I removed a large pot-full of dubious, sticky leaves, mostly from apples but one or two from pears. This task will be repeated every day from now on.

Asian pear: Shinsui

Quite a lot of the fruitlets were damaged by caterpillars, but the grazed surfaces have mostly healed over and should be edible, showing just a bit of coarse russeting. It will be interesting to see if the good weather so far this year has any effect on the flavour, as I've found this variety very variable in the past. 

More Fruit-mining Tortrix damage?

Now that the fruitlets are growing on, more caterpillar damage is becoming evident. I think a fair number will actually survive to produce usable, if blemished fruit. 

Insecticides?

The moth larvae attack is turning out to be quite bad, lots of fruitlets bored or nibbled on the outside. Mostly on the Conference/Concorde cordons, with minor damage on the adjacent Comice/Beth (an one or two nibbles elsewhere). 

However, there remains the dilemma of what to use. I've never had cause to spray for insect attack before, only the occasional dose of Bordeaux on scab-susceptible varieties.

Derris is the only insecticide recommended by the Soil Association. The active ingredient is Rotenone. However, all rotenone-based insecticides were banned for public use last year, presumably due to the suspicion they might cause nervous system damage.

Hort. Week: Derris Banned

Pesticides.gov advice

The only other choice are Bifenthrin-based inseciticides (Bug Clear), a pyrethroid compound which is also a neurotoxin. Just because such insecticides derive from plant-based substances does not make them any safer, ethical or 'natural'. Bifrenthrin isn't terribly water-soluble. Hopefully that means it won't leach straight into the water table. However, it means it's more likely it will persist in the environment.

In the end I did spray only the Conference/Concorde cordons with Bifenthrin/Bug Clear this morning. We have no Blue tits nesting this year, may be they had kept the infestations at bay in previous years, and my fear is a explosion in the population if the pest goes unchecked in this season. Hopefully this will redress the balance, and the birds will be back next year. The fact we've also had a really bad attack of Gooseberry sawfly for the first time in the last decade suggests there is some change in the pest/predator balance this year.

I'm not going to rant about 'elf and safety gorn mad. We don't know what the effects of these substances are in the environment because ecosystems are enormously complex and difficult to study. Years ago, arsenate of lead and nicotine were popular and highly effective insecticides. On the other hand, pests can destroy whole crops and commercial growers will all spray regularly as a preventative measure so the fruit-eater doesn't escape the issues either way.

Fruitlet Mining Tortrix?

Another new nasty today, I think it's probably a Fruitlet mining moth (Pammene rhediella ) though I have my doubts as the colour and 

season seem slightly wrong. 

Which ever species it it, this one is 

rather more damaging, as it bores right into the fruit. 

I've only found it on Conference so far, perhaps because the long 

fruitlets are set close together, giving it more shelter. It usually joins two fruitlets together with silk, which is the best clue to spotting it.

More on the various Tortrix moths

Fruit Tree Tortrix Moth

Curled leaves, which usually unravel to reveal a medium-sized green caterpillar (Archips podana, the Fruit Tree Tortrix) usually sitting amid a web of silk and frass of droppings. 

Not a lot to be done, especially as the leaves bound with silk are an excellent way of escaping any spray treatments. I usually pull curled leaves off when I find them.

More in general about fruit tree caterpillars

Fruit-Tree Tortrix Moth Lifecycle