This is my first year with cannas in the landscape and I was really unprepared for the Japanese beetles and the canna worms....they hit all the cannas...
What do you all use when your cannas come up in the spring to avoid these pests?
Thanks
Canna worms, or leaf rollers
I can't beleive I missed this forum!
Tigerlily, I had such a problem with leaf rollers on my canna last year that I was on the verge of digging all of them and giving up. At a suggestion, I sprayed and dusted with BT after unrolling leaves and removing the worms. (Ugly little critters) Ultimately, I lost the battle.
I decided to give them one more try this year before I sacraficed them to the compost pile. I used Bayer Rose product that has a fertilizer and insecticide and is in a granular form. I scratched in the recommended amount and re-applied it every 6 weeks. I have seen very few leaf roller this year and when I do find them, I cut the entire stalk to the ground and destroy all of it. In spring, I also removed any debri around the cannas and put down a fresh layer of newspaper and mulch.
I wish there were more on this pest at DG. I searched in various ways in the Bugfiles, and I get nothing.
I even did a suggested "generalized search" with both leaf roller (and leafroller) and canna and get nothing. (Did get the Oak leafroller, though.......)
It would be great to identify the adult so that it could alert one to beware of a possible infestation.
Guess I'll go Google awhile.
http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/orn/brazilian_skipper.htm
http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/orn/L_canna_leaf_roller.htm
There.
This message was edited Sep 27, 2006 9:17 PM
lol. You must either really frustrated or really bored.
LOL, pepper23.
Maybe I *am* just a bit moody today...........
Robert.
i think its a type of ugly moth that lays the eggs of the leaf roller
The Brazilian Skipper is kinda cute, but the "lesser leaf-roller moth" is just so NOT.
How many canna do you have raydio? In the Spring when they first start to come up I spritz a little pyola into the unfurling leaves when I do my walkabouts. Othene works well too. If you start early and stick with it they wont be that much of a problem .. I always carry an exact knife with me as well to cut any silk I see on the leaves that I missed.
X
I recently added a huge amount of starts I got in a trade with a very generous DGer. But before that, I had a clump of Tropicanna and a 6-foot row of Red Stripe.
The Red Stripe came in with the leaf-rollers, before that I hadn't been bothered by them. I knew the Reds were hosting the leaf-rollers but took them anyway. I used Orthenex and got rid of them but they *do* tend to come back. They weren't badly infested, just 3 or 4 leaves with only one or two worms in them, no biggie.
I'll be removing all the frost-killed tops and destroying them or putting them in a black plastic bag and letting them go wherever our trash collector takes our stuff. He-he.
I don't use the Exacto, just my fingers to open the "seam" and then I just mash the lil darlings in the folded leaf.
What a trashy place they make of a leaf while they're there. P-U.
The Brazilian Skipper would be seen in the day and the stealthy moth by night, if you're out there with a flashlight. Neither of them is as noticeable as, say, a "Cabbage Fly", so catching them laying eggs might not be easy.
BTW: it's the lesser leafroller that I had.
Never heard of pyola, will look into that. I usually rely on Sevin or another carbaryl spray when I can and the Othenex for plants with multiple needs (like roses).
I don't anticipate it being hard to stay on top of them.
Robert.