What's occupying my garden that's so ugly? The eastern tent caterpillar.
They have started making their home in my crabapples. They have told their friends, and they have increased their hold in my garden. They are ugly. If these caterpillars turned into a beautiful butterfly, I might think differently. But the eastern tent caterpillar turns into a nondescript moth.
I am a lazy gardener. That's why I garden organically most of the time. And I've found that there is usually a natural predator that will come along eventually. Like ladybugs that come to eat the aphids. But because most birds won't eat a hairy caterpillar, I've read that the eastern tent caterpillar's only natural enemy is the cuckoo bird.
It's unlikely I'll have any cuckoo birds passing by, looking for caterpillars in my garden.
So, I've been wondering how to take care of these unwelcome guests. I've tried winding the tent around a stick, but the tents are usually very high up where I can't reach, and I don't see any progress being made with this method.
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| Look closely - there's a caterpillar here! |
And now they are everywhere. Eating leaves. And leaves. And more leaves.
And what do I do? Wring my hands, and wish I knew a cuckoo bird owner!
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| It seems every picture I take has a caterpillar in it! |
Next year I'm going to have to do something with these caterpillars. I'm just not sure what! Do you have a cuckoo bird I could borrow?
No cuckoos from here I'm afraid but good luck in controlling them. I'm sure you'll come up with something effective and environmentally friendly :)Hope you'll get rid of them before they do too much damage. Keep us posted how you'll get on.
ReplyDeleteI hope to get rid of them, too. I'm going to keep researching my options (other than cuckoos!).
DeleteWorms, worms, and more worms. It is the worst I have ever seen it. I am seeing gobs of army worms or cut worms, too. The worm in your rose picture looks more like an army worm than the tent caterpillar, so maybe you have both!! Yikes!! The last time it was this bad was that year we got 50 inches of rain. I think it was 2004. Obviously the worms like wet springs. And I think the mild winter just compounded the problem. Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) is the organic route to kill them. Unfortunately it will kill all caterpillars and worms, whether it is a monarch or a swallow tail butterfly or an eastern tent caterpillar moth. If you can't reach the webs with a rake or pole, you might try a jet stream of water to blast the web open. We are all in the same boat.
ReplyDeleteI wondered if that last worm pictured was a tent caterpillar or something else. I'm sure I have all the bad worms! The tent caterpillars are just horrible this year, although they've been using my crabapple trees for the last several years. This year the trees are just covered, and all I see are webs, webs, and more webs. :( I have used water to blast them down, but it doesn't seem to deter them for long. They just crawl back up.
DeleteWOW HOLLY! I feel for you! It doesn’t look pretty…as a matter of fact it looks a little scary! I’ve had a nasty snail problem this spring, but it sounds mild compared to your caterpillar story. Good luck! I hope you can get them under control.
ReplyDeleteI hope maybe I can do something about the eggs next fall before they turn into webs, but I'm still not exactly sure what to do. I hope your get your snail problem under control, too.
DeleteI was thinking a blast of water too. I would be squishing everyone I saw....
ReplyDeleteI do need to start squishing them. There are truly thousands of them!
DeleteMy father use to pick up the nest in a large metal bucket and burn it. But if you can't reach the nest...
ReplyDeleteGetting them one by one around the garden is not an easy job to do, especially when there's caterpillars everywhere. Yike! I would be as desperate as you can be with a problem like that. Hope you'll find a solution. 8/
I've heard people say to burn them, but I wasn't sure how that was done. Still, being unable to reach them has become a problem. Every time I disturb a web, they just move farther up the tree!
DeleteWe had more tent caterpillars last year but with so much woods around they don't seem to bother the garden. I'm sure your drought has something to do with how prolific they are don't you think?
ReplyDeleteThey don't really like the pine trees around here, so the trees in my garden are their favorite. :( They have been around for a few years, so I'm not sure if the drought helped them or if they've just multiplied normally. But it's at a point that is beyond frustrating to me!
DeleteHolley,
ReplyDeleteWe had an infestation two years ago and cleaned it up quite easily with Bt.
Bt is very, very effective against this particular pest, especially if you use it now. You don't spray the caterpillars or the tents, you spray the leaves (they eat the Bt with the leaf and then the Bt kills them - takes a couple of days, but it works very, very well).
I'd head on over to your local garden center and get some. It's a natural, non-toxic, effective method and not very labor intensive either. Simply spray the leaves of the affected trees. I hate bugs, especially crawly ones, so I much preferred spraying to (UGH!!) trying to remove the tents and squishing them.
Since some of the caterpillars may have already started to pupate, you may end up with some adults emerging and laying eggs in the fall. Check the trees in the fall after the leaves fall and prune away large clusters of eggs (or scrape them off if you don't want to cut a specific branch off). Then, to be safe, I'd spray the leaves again in spring next year, as there will probably be a few stragglers who make it through. That should take care of the problem indefinitely, unless you have a neighboring reservoir of them. If so, just spray every spring about this time with Bt and you'll stay ahead of them.
Good luck with this!
Cathy
BTW, if your trees are getting defoliated, it's plenty early in the season for them to refoliate, so they should be fine. ;)
Thanks for the information, Cathy. I may have to use Bt. I've stayed away from it because I love seeing all the other caterpillars and moths and butterflies in my garden. I am hoping to get to the eggs next fall, but if they are very high in the tree, I'm not sure I'll be able to see them. We shall see how it goes. I may have to spray these trees, and hope that other creatures aren't affected. I do appreciate the information.
DeleteHrm... I like my caterpillars, because most of them turn into butterflies of some sort, even if most are rather non-descript cabbage butterflies, but then I don't have an infestation like yours.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Yes, for the first few years I thought a few extra moths wouldn't be a problem. But these creatures are eating everything! They are taking over the entire garden. It's not just a few caterpillars and a few webs, it's numerous webs and thousands of these hungry mouths!
DeleteOoh Holley, that certainly doesn't look good! I don't find these caterpillars ugly at all, but I can imagine that they do a lot of damage in your garden by eating everything that is in their way. Hope you find an organic environmental friendly solution to deal with these critters! Sorry you have these visitors in your garden, they are for sure uninvited, especially when they come in these numbers.
ReplyDeleteChristina
It's the number of them that's so bad. I have never had to face such an infestation!
DeleteWhat a frustrating ordeal :-/ You could try releasing a bunch of nematodes on the sacks you can reach. Supposedly they will eat the females before they can lay anymore eggs.
ReplyDeleteGood luck finding something that works! You could even dress up as a cuckoo and try to scare them off ;-) (I've tried a similar approach to some unwantables in my garden...however I've gotten mixed results)
Oh, I hadn't thought of nematodes! I'll look into that! If I thought dressing up like a cuckoo would work, I'd be working on a costume! :)
DeleteUrg. No words of wisdom from here, but plenty of sympathy! I like bleufleur's idea of dressing up as a cuckoo...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the sympathy. I can't believe these things are so prolific!
DeleteThey are so bad here that the county is spraying for gypsy and tent moths. Too many ruin orchards around here. The farmers burn the nests here too. There are no nice ways of getting rid of them.
ReplyDeleteI guess they get out of control precisely because there is no natural control. Thankfully, I don't have any fruiting trees that they're ruining, just ornamental, but they are still quite frustrating.
DeleteOh my! That's a lot of caterpillars! I feel for you, as ladybugs never seem to find my aphids before my plants are kaput. Maybe you could spray the tents with jet sprays of water to remove them like I do my aphids?
ReplyDeleteGood luck! I hope your poor crabapples come out okay!
Even after they've come out of the web, the web still stays there, stuck - and ugly. :( Hmm....I wonder if sprays of water will remove the eggs in the fall.
DeleteWhat's worse a slimy slug or a furry caterpillar ?
ReplyDeleteI guess it depends on which one is in your own garden! At least slugs like beer, and the gardener has a good excuse to finish off the unused portion!
DeleteYuck, that's not pretty at all. Hope you find a solution soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shirley. I do too!
DeleteTent caterpillars give me the heebie jeebies. Their writhing mass in their 'tent' grosses me out. Here in Michigan we've been lucky with little tent caterpillar infestations. But with the mild winter, we'll see what happens this summer.
ReplyDeleteThey gross me out, too. I had a hard time taking a picture of that web. I have been avoiding that entire area for weeks, just knowing that they're going to drop on me!
DeleteOoh, that looks nasty. Hope you find a solution soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Crystal. Those webs really do ruin the looks of that entire area.
DeleteI am sorry about the invasion, I hope you will figure out what to do with them (hand pick?). There is always something happening in the garden...
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right - there's always something wonderful happening, and something to worry about!
DeleteGood luck getting rid of those nasty pests in a hurry, Holley. Hopefully, their caterpillar stage of life will be over soon. A couple of years ago, a cuckoo bird actually passed through my garden! The first few times I heard "cuckoo" coming from the cedar tree, I thought I was the one going "cuckoo." :-)
ReplyDeleteOh, my goodness! Maybe I should be on the lookout for a cuckoo bird! He would be well fed here!
DeleteBt has a short life span.
ReplyDeleteThanks, greggo. Never having used it, I didn't know, and that does soothe my fears in using it a bit. That seems like the only feasible solution.
DeleteWow, I don't think we have these in Blighty ... which makes me want to rush out and hug a snail in gratitude!!!
ReplyDeleteThat should have been "hug a slug" really, from a poetic point of view, shouldn't it?
ReplyDeleteHug a slug does roll off the tongue a bit easier! :)
DeleteWe get those caterpillars like crazy at the farm and they are so bad for the fruit crops. I feel for you and your lovely garden.
ReplyDeleteI do feel much sorrier for the farmers that rely on their crops and get an infestation. But my lovely garden doesn't look so lovely with these ugly webs all over the trees, worms crawling around, and naked plants from the leaves being chewed off!
DeleteOh my, I see why you're so distressed. It's been a bad year for a number of pests here too. Cutworms, slugs and grasshoppers are wreaking havoc on our gardens.
ReplyDeleteThese trees are usually so beautiful, but this year I try not to look at them. :( And yes, I've seen lots of other bad worms, red bugs, ticks and little grasshoppers already!
DeleteIt's enough to make a girl cuckoo! You'd think there would be a 1-800-cuckoo to call! Rent a bird! But how many cuckoos would it take to eat all those hairy caterpillars! My father used to use the burn method. I remember a long pole with wad of something at the end and fire - but not the details....must be a better way now!
ReplyDeleteI have been a bit afraid to just light a fire next to my trees! I suppose, though, if I had the water hose handy...
DeleteI'm sorry, tent caterpillars are such a pain. I wish I could tell one of the Yellow-Billed Cuckoos that nest here during the summer to stop by your garden!
ReplyDeleteWow - I wish you could tell that cuckoo to fly over here, too! I have enough to feed its entire family! :)
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