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This time of the year,
it’s good to get out, walk around, and give your plants a good looking over
before the growing season gets too far along. It’s amazing what things you
might find, including these…the dreaded bagworm!
If you have evergreens
in your landscape, especially spruce, pines, junipers, and arborvitae, take
a close inspection and look for these small brown bags hanging from the
branches. They’re called bagworms, their eggs have over wintered in these
bag homes, and when they hatch out in late May or early June, they become
needle eating machines.
As a matter of fact, if
the bag does contain bagworm eggs, there can be as many as 500 eggs in each
little bag, and when they hatch out, they either stay on this evergreen and
begin to feed, or get into the air and let the air take them to other
evergreens, where they begin to feed and start the whole bagworm life cycle
over again.
So, by hand picking them
now, before they hatch out in late May or early June, you can prevent these
bagworms from ever getting a start feeding on your evergreens. By the way,
when you pick them off, smash them, or somehow destroy them. That way you
make sure those eggs won’t hatch out, even if their laying in a landfill
somewhere.
Now if you have bagworms
in the top of larger evergreens that you cannot reach, just keep watching
for them to hatch out – early June or so. Once they have hatched and you
can see their activity on the plant, a good spraying of Bt will knock them
out, and your plants will be bagworm free…unless they blow in from your
neighbor’s yard. So keep a bagworm watch going on your evergreens, at least
thru the month of June. |
