AusBonsai

I have had this hawthorn for about a year now and lately something has been eating the leaves. I have only noticed the bugs tonight, after it has cooled down a bit from the hot days we are having. Could somebody help me identify them and a remedy to get rid of them other than picking them off with my fingers!!! (Its the yellow-brown thing)

it is pear slug. sray with conifidor or some thing similar

Thanks for a quick answer

Looks like the work of cherry slug - probably the same thing as pear slug. I would suggest pest oil. Maybe a mixture of pest oil, confidor, and mavrik all in the one dose. That is what we use at the NBPCA and I use it at home aswell. Try and avoid having pest oil on your tree in the heat of our full sun at the moment - it will fry the foliage.

Less toxic solutions to pear and cherry slug are wood ash (the fine grey/ white powdery stuff, not lumpy black charcoal) or talcum powder (use the cheapest, unperfumed stuff - the slugs won't care). Dust the tree lightly with the powder which sticks to the slugs and dehydrates them. Need to apply regularly through growing season whenever they appear.
You could also try encouraging paper wasps. While these have vicious stings if you get too close to the nest, they do hunt cherry slugs to feed the baby wasps!

I use the same solution as Shibui, talcom powder fixes them very quickly and you don't kill the good guys.
Craigw

Pear and cherry slug attacks our pear and plum trees every year and I get rid of them with just pyrethrum garden spray. Works a charm.

Thanks everyone for your help.............much appreciated.

By the way - that Hawthorne is starting to look OK - well done!

pshowell wrote:it is pear slug.

Leigh Taafe wrote:Looks like the work of cherry slug...

Gday Hooky & Co!

I agree that the culprit is Pear/Cherry slug. It is not actually a slug, but the larva of a species of sawfly. I haven't had much of a problem with them this year, but if I had, I would much prefer the wood ash solution to the harder options.

I often find little pupae in my soil mix when repotting, and now I'm beginning to think that many of these are Pear/Cherry slug cocoons. I wonder if repotting at exactly the right time (when is the perfect time?) and thoroughly examining the soil mix for pupae (accidentally) has helped in the reduction of the pest...

Thanks, good luck, and please let us know how you go.

FlyBri.