How to deal with a bark beetle in the garden with folk remedies and insecticides?

If you need to get rid of the bark beetle in the garden, you should learn how to do this in the most effective and safe way. The beetle spoils not only trees - if you do not prevent its spread, it can destroy a wooden house in a few years. Fighting a pest is difficult, but if you are persistent, the trees will be healthy and will delight you with a rich harvest. In order not to condemn yourself to a long war with a pest, take preventive measures, make your site completely unattractive to insects.

You need to know the pest by sight

If you notice small dark brown or black bugs in the garden, sound the alarm: a bark beetle attacked the fruit trees. To determine exactly which pest is crawling on your apple tree, catch one and examine it with a magnifying glass. It is not difficult to identify the pest laying eggs under the bark: to remove undigested wood debris, there is a bevel at the back of its body surrounded by small teeth.

The bark beetle's sense of smell is no worse than that of a bloodhound dog. In flight, he finds the smell of the most delicious tree and goes there. The fertilized female gnaws a hole in the bark, gets inside and makes many passages to lay eggs there. When larvae form from the clutches, they begin to actively feed. Food is the tissue of the tree and its sap. The moves become more ramified and wider. Insect secretions contain spores of fungi that destroy wood. The infection spreads - the plant withers and may die.

When young insects go out into the air, they leave the tree where they hatched and look for another plant. There mating takes place, the female lays eggs, and the whole process goes in a new circle. During a year, 2-3 generations of pests that spoil wood can grow. If you do not take action, bark beetles will quickly occupy the entire garden.

How to recognize affected trees?

Healthy plants have strong bark and hard wood. To make passages, the female has to make great efforts. It is much easier for a pest to settle on a sick, weakened apple tree. First of all, inspect old plants with damaged bark and dried out fragments. Listen for a woodpecker that feeds on bark beetle larvae knocking on the trunk. If a bird constantly sits on the same tree, be sure: a pest has appeared there.

If you notice round or oval holes in the bark, it means that the bark beetle has attacked the tree for a long time. Small spills of resin can also serve as a danger signal. Examine the ground in the trunk circle. If you see small sawdust there, pay attention to their color. A brown shade means that the pest has settled recently, gnaws only the bark. If you notice white wood, it means that the larvae have penetrated far into the tissues - most likely, the plant can no longer be saved.

In spring, look for adults in the garden, during this period they actively mate. Collect insects in a sturdy bag and incinerate them. Coat the trunks with oil paint or clay with manure, females will not gnaw such bark. Spread thick branches and logs around the perimeter, where insects will lay eggs. Throw branches into the fire periodically and replace with new wood.

Fight against bark beetle

If the bark beetle is firmly established in your garden, you should destroy it with chemicals. To coat the trunks, you can use different means, each of them is accompanied by instructions, which describe how and with what frequency the insecticide should be applied.Read the recommendations, do not forget to pay attention to the toxicity and protective measures when working with the drug.

To protect against bark beetle, you can use:

• "Confidor Extra";
• Bi-58;
• Vitalizer;
• "Clipper";
• "Senezh-Insa".

It is necessary that only the bark beetle fall under the gun - the fight against the beetle should not affect the useful inhabitants of the garden. With special diligence, you can achieve complete "sterility": there will be no bacteria that improve the composition of the soil, no insects pollinating flowers, and birds will fly away. The gardener's problems will end, but he will soon notice that the plants have also begun to wither. In order not to make a lifeless desert out of the site, choose preparations that are safe for beneficial microflora and the necessary insects. A good option would be "Vitalizer", which acts selectively on pests.

If the lesion is not too large, cut off the damaged area of ​​the bark, burn it, and treat the wound with garden pitch. A well-prepared composition will help to heal the damage and prevent infections and fungal spores from penetrating deep into the wood.

You can make your own garden var.

1. Melt 6 parts of paraffin wax.
2. Add 3 parts rosin and let it boil.
3. Pour in 10 parts vegetable oil and cook for a few minutes.
4. In the cooled mixture, add a little antifungal agent.

Advice

Seeing the characteristic holes on the barrel, take an awl and stick it into the damaged area. By the depth to which the tool entered the wood, one can judge the degree of damage to the plant.

Pheromone traps can be purchased from departments selling products for the garden and vegetable garden. They give off the smell of an insect ready to mate. Pests will flock to the inviting aroma, where you can collect and burn them. This remedy is best used in the spring, it is effective only against adult insects and does not work on larvae. Be careful if there is a bark beetle infested garden nearby. All pests from that area will flock to your bait, the neighbors will be very grateful to you.

Pest prevention

To prevent insects from attacking the garden, do not create attractive conditions for them. Cut down old and diseased trees, do not allow broken branches, pieces of bark, old boards and logs to lie on the ground. All plant debris should be immediately thrown into the fire. It is better to make decorative structures of metal or plastic, and if you want to use boards and logs, treat them with insecticidal preparations.

Tidy up your garden, cut down trees that cannot be saved and burn them. On healthy plants, cut dry, diseased and damaged branches, collect broken branches and wood debris from the ground and throw them all into the fire. Inspect wooden buildings - beetles can also take a liking to dead wood for masonry. If you do not take urgent measures, you can lose not only fruit trees, but also buildings.

Healthy apple and pear trees are not very attractive to the beetle. Take care of your garden to keep the plants strong and immune. Prune every year, relentlessly remove any branches showing signs of damage or disease. Do not let the crown grow too densely: extra branches weaken the plant, create conditions for air stagnation and decay. When planting new trees, make sure they don't grow too thick. Don't be greedy - one apple tree growing in the open will give you more harvest than 3 trees planted close to each other.

Beetles can fly to fruit trees from infected buildings. Every year treat all wooden buildings with special impregnation or hot drying oil. It is better to disassemble and burn dilapidated sheds and fences, and in their place build new ones from material treated with insecticides. Check with a building materials store manager to see if you really need a wooden fence or sidewalk. Perhaps a slab or metal construction will be both prettier and safer.

Fighting bark beetle with folk methods

If the beetle already considers itself the owner of the site, has affected many trees and buildings, it will be necessary to fight the bark beetle in the garden only with the help of chemicals. Summer residents themselves will not always be able to carry out effective processing. If a disaster is approaching a catastrophic phase, it is best to invite exterminators. When the pest is just beginning to colonize your territory, you can try to get rid of it using folk methods.

As soon as there is a suspicion that bark beetles have started up on the site, mix equal amounts of manure and slaked lime and coat the trunks of fruit trees. Do the work carefully so that there are no untreated areas on the bark. If a plant is already damaged, treat it with a solution: add 1 kg of untreated carbolic acid and 2 liters of liquid soap to a bucket of water.

Do not forget that every pest in nature has its own enemies. Some owners are doing their best to rid the site of birds that spoil the crop. Do not engage in an all-out fight with birds, predatory species will not touch your berries, they hunt insects. It's great if a woodpecker flies into the garden, it feeds on bark beetle larvae. Do not drive it away, give the bird a chance to heal the infected trees.

The bark beetle does not care whether it is a valuable tree or not, the necessary building or a dilapidated barn. If you do not need any structure or plant, it is difficult to maintain the object in proper condition, then eliminate it and give all your strength to caring for good healthy plants and strong structures. Calculate your possibilities: you can keep a huge garden or just a couple of apple trees and one cherry. If the trees are strong, they themselves will be able to resist the pest, but for this they need to be watered, fed and pruned in time. Keep your farm in order, and the bark beetle will not come to a well-groomed area.