Codling Moth

Blech - the thought of these burrowing around inside my apples gives me the heebie jeebies.

Every year since we've been in this house (5yrs) our apples (and pears to a lesser degree) have been inundated with codling moth. I've never been too bothered about it and we've just let the fruit fall off and rot (sounds terrible doesn't it!). Remember, when we embarked on this permaculture garden thing back in March when I was planning it all, we had a large line of very tall trees cutting our lower section off from our sights. It was so overgrown with grass that it wasn't usable land unless we upkept it - which we never did!

I hadn't really thought too much about the fruit trees this year with getting everything else up and running, but it's been bugging me (hehe) about how to manage this problem.

In tonight's organics course class I asked the tutor on the best course of action. It's too late in the year to wrap the trunk to stop the caterpillars crawling up the tree (the best time to wrap is in winter and remove it in spring). So, I think I will go on the hunt for some moth traps. They are hung from the trees and baited with pheromones to attract and trap the moths.