Gooseberries decimated in 24 hours!

[Nicos]

OK- a new spanner in the spokes

I didn't get a piccie BUT.....

Last year we had a ginormous grasshopper on our climbing beans

( OK I'd disected many a locust in Bio class and never seen a grasshopper as big as this thingy...)...do you get locust this far North????

OK- so within 24 hrs- just the twisty twine was left- no leaves, no flowers, no beans....just twigs...next time I'm going to feed it's offspring to the chooks!!!

Never seen anything like it- and will certainly be alert to get my revenge this year

[leicestershirelass]

I've never had any fruit off my redcurrants or gooseberry plants: the sawfly strip them every year.

We had his problem for 2 consecutive years ... so dug up the gooseberry plants.... don't mind sharing but to strip the lot is not on !

[burnie]

Caterpillar pie?
I usually find that once I have a use for something,it vanishes.

[Twinkle]

we have about 45 metres of currant bushes so picking them off manually isn't an appealing option :-(

Also the ground under them is membrane/gravel to keep the weeds down so impossible to hoe, and every year we get sawfly

Thought the hard winter might have finished a few off, but they're back with a vengenance *grrr*

Current (sorry) plan is to get rid of the whitecurrant bushes as we don't use them - they were left in just for the birds and do an overhaul in autumn - will we be OK with the membrane beneath them ? Or should we go back to soil for ease of hoeing d'you reckon ??

Thanks in advance

[jackie j]

I have gooseberry bushes one on plot no 1 and have never had any fruit or flowers, I dont see any damage on them so just thought that it hadnt produced, this is the 3rd year, I have 2 on plot no 2 and this is the first year. Will I get fruit on the first bush next year.

[womble]

Here's an interesting article on the subject.

Organic gardening and pests: the gooseberry sawfly - Telegraph

I've had my rhubarb mixture ready for a few weeks and it hasn't been needed. Not sure what has kept the numbers down, whether it was wasps, birds or something else. But something has, I've only had to squash a few.
I'm hoping because I don't use anything artificial in the garden, that's the reason.

[Tuffwood]

Not really had problems with Sawfly, its American Mildew that gets me every year, just as I think I have a nice batch of fruit growing on the bushes it set in, although it doesn't seem to effect my 2 Withams Industry bushes. Think I'm going to get rid of them for next year and start with a more tolerant variety elsewhere in the garden.

[Send A Cow]

That’s such a shame! It must be quite unusual for entire bushes to be stripped in such a short space of time. I’m no expert so my practical advice would be to cover one bush with netting and one without and see which one survives! Is there not some sort of environmentally spray that can be used to protect them?

[Madasafish]

Our local foxes eat strawberries and redcurrants...and blueberries (given the chance.. which I don't give as I net very thoroughly)

[newbieveggie]

Hi there.

I don't know if it will help but this year I have had gooseberries and no sawfly. So what I did was before the season began I covered my bushes with net curtains so that the birds wouldn't peck off the buds. Then when I saw that the flowers were coming out I took off the net for a week so that they could be pollinated, then replaced it until harvest time. I did the same for my currants as well. Perhaps its worth a try ?

[BUFFS]

picked off several hundred catapillers of my two big goosegog bushes as soon as we saw any leaf damage,we put them into large yoghurt tubs as we found them and when we had searched for what seemed hours they were offered to the chooks ,who ate them,just to please us..i think,we did this for a week,covered them with cheap wilko plastic netting,now they are soft to the touch,and will be picked tomorrow,a rough guess is that we will get about 3/4kilos,loads of lovely pies.....