Barbara.

I had the webworms show up on one spot on the pecan tree last week or the week before. They stripped the foliage in a couple of spots, but that's all they did and I haven't seen any more.

Then the army worms showed up and stripped a plum tree bare--all but two small limbs. They also ate some of the old tomato plants, but not the new ones. They appear to be gone as well now.

We don't normally get these pests here at our house in the fall, but this is far from a normal year.

Dawn

Dawn
As you know, there's NO way to combat fall webworms in tall pecan trees. But I think I have destroyed the one's in my fave, and much shorter, River Birch with my onslaught against them by raking the webs and the BT spray yesterday! Messed up their whole world, LOL!

Barbara

Barbara,

My old farmer friend, Fred, stopped by this week with pecan 'twigs' in the bed of his pickup. They were about 8 to 10" long and had both foliage and nuts on them. Something had chewed all the way around the outer portion of the twigs and girdled them and then they snapped off the tree. I told him I assumed it was twig girdlers but that I had no clue what to do about them. I guess I need to do some research and figure it out. If spraying something is the solution, I doubt he can spray the tree. It is probably 40 to 50 years old and very tall. It is frustrating when a tree has a problem and you can't get high enough up to spray the tree adequately.

Dawn

Dawn,

I'm almost certain it is twig girdler. I found my first ones up here yesterday.

Next year's twig girdlers are inside those twigs, so burning or otherwise destroying them will help a lot for future years. I don't know how far these things travel in a season, so if someone has other trees surrounding and close to his/her property, it may not help much to pick up and burn just a few. It certainly will not hurt the situation, though.

Last year I was able to prevent damage from twig girdlers on some areas of my place because I sprayed Sevin for weevils on my pecan trees. I would certainly not recommend using sevin to spray for twig girdlers, though, even if cost was not a factor. I really don't know of anything to try, other than picking up all of the twigs in as big an area as possible and then destroying them. A lot of the twigs hang in the tree and don't fall, so it's not possible to get them all.

Scott,

Thanks for the diagnosis. I assumed you could tell me if I was correctly guessing what his tree has. I figured it was twig girdlers but only because I couldn't think of anything else it might be. I'll let Fred know he needs to pick up and dispose of the twigs to break the cycle. He'll have to get someone else to do it. He's quite elderly (oh, he'd kill me if he knew I said that--about 88 to 92 years old, although I don't know exactly) so he doesn't have the mobility to walk around picking up a bunch of twigs.

He has a lot of pecan trees randomly scattered through his cow pastures and this is the only one showing symptoms, so maybe we can nip it in the bud. The trees, for the most part, are not close to one another. They tend to produce really well, but in recent years he hasn't had the tree shakers come in and shake the trees. I think he just picks up the pecans that fall naturally nowadays. Getting older does slow you down a little, LOL.

Rickey, If you see this, don't you dare tell Fred I described him as elderly...he'd be so mad! He still thinks he's 45 years old and you can't make him slow down--but then, you already know that.

Dawn

Dawn
Maybe Fred really is 88 going on 45. Hat's off to the dude. I know a few 45 yr olds a lot more lethargic and stove up than Fred seems to be.
By the way, I still have an ugly River Birch tree no thanks to the nasty webworms, but they are all graveyard dead now, thanks to the BT, and breaking into their webs, poking holes in them, dragging down as many as I could reach.
Barbara

Barbara,

Today I saw webworms in some 'trash trees' along Fred's fenceline. I had an urge to stop the car and get out and break the webs, but the webs were too high up in the trees.

Fred is part of a generation of "old farmers and ranchers" that truly built this county. We have already lost so many of them---usually in their mid-80s to mid-90s--but we still have a good number of them left. What amazes me about these guys is that the word retirement is not in their vocabulary. They just keep on farming and ranching until the wife or kids "make" them stop....and that usually happens only after they pass out (or have a heart attack or a stroke), fall off a tractor and then get run over by the tractor....and then the kids (who often are older than me!) sell the tractor because that's the only way to keep "the old man" off of it! If it isn't a tractor accident that puts a halt to the farming or ranching it is getting thrown off a horse at the age of 85 or 88 or 90 and breaking a hip or their pelvis or something. (I do know a couple of stubborn old goats who've done that and are now back in the saddle again after healing the broken bones and going through therapy to regain good use of their legs/hips/etc....not that their doctors know they're riding again. LOL)

Glad you got all the webworms. Bt is wonderful and breaking open the webs certainly is effective too. I don't know what we'd do without Bt.

All I can say is that I hope that I live to be the age of these old farmers and ranchers and that I am still gardening at that age, and stubbornly refusing to give it up. When we bought our land and started construction of the house, Fred was recovering from spinal surgery and walked the mile or so from his house to our house and back again as part of his recovery. His back was so stiff that I worried about him walking that distance. Since then, he's had both knees replaced and just keeps on keeping on and doesn't let anything get him down. He's a good role model for all of us as we age.

Dawn

Dawn
I think I'll pass on the spinal surgery, and knee replacements. But I do believe in not retiring, but refiring.
The old rancher,(88yrs), I worked for was exactly like Fred, from the old school, only he was suffering from memory loss. He could still remember 'back when', and tell some wild stories about his youth. The kids had to take his keys, (and guns) away, thank God! But sometimes I'd go looking for him and he'd be outside trying to get his old pickup started, even though it had a flat, and hadn't run in years. One time I told him to get ready, we were going to town, he'd usually wait outside in his favorite 'sittin place', so when I went to the garage to go, he was in the driver's seat trying to get the car started, lol!
Dawn, if we live to be that age, they'll probably find us out in the garden with a basket of tomatos clutched in our hands don't you think?

Barbara