Almost all owners of household households grow raspberries, and this relatively unpretentious bush usually does not leave a gardener without a crop. But, unfortunately, it happens that, enjoying a fragrant berry from its own site, the summer resident discovers in the sweet pulp a completely unappetizing worm.

This review will discuss which pests can infect raspberries, where they come from in the bushes, the best way to handle raspberries to prevent pests, and how to deal with the problem if it has already arisen.

Where do worms come from berries

Garden pests are usually activated in spring by overwintering in the soil. The habitat of insects or their larvae (pupae) can also be compost, weeds, fall leaves and any other organics on the site, that is why it is very important to remove all plant residues after harvesting and not to use them as shelter for raspberry.

However, wind, birds and even other insects can also be carriers of parasites. For example, an aphids on trees and shrubs in spring carefully carry ants that feed on honey dew secreted by this garden pest, they often provide winter aphids in their anthill for aphids.

Did you know? The well-known thieves' term “raspberry”, meaning slang gathering place on slang, a hangout, from the point of view of etymology has nothing to do with sweet berries. In old Odessa, this word originally sounded like “melina,” which in Hebrew means “refuge,” but was subsequently somewhat distorted.

Thus, it is impossible to completely protect your site from the invasion of pests, including those that lay eggs in the ovaries and, thus, cause the worminess of the fruit. At the same time, a good gardener is still able to create conditions that will reduce the likelihood of such a problem.

So, the main mistakes that must be avoided in the process of planting raspberries and caring for him, are as follows:

• you can not plant raspberries near a blackberry, including wild, as well as a meadowsweet, because these plants have common enemies;
• the appearance of a large number of ants on the site should not be ignored, in addition, it is important to timely and actively fight the aphids that these "hardworking" insects spread across cultivated plants;
• humus and compost are a frequent source of pest and garden infestation, so fertilizers need to be dosed and, if possible, combined with tillage with modern biological products to destroy pests;
• pests feel much more comfortable in areas with a dense planting, therefore, too active growth of the bush must be combated in a timely manner;
• ignoring such an event as regular weed weeding is another common cause of infection of the site with harmful insects and ticks.

Who lives in raspberries

Raspberries with pleasure eat up such garden pests familiar to every summer resident as aphids, leafworms, weevils, scoops, etc., however, this bush has its own personal enemies. These are the so-called monophages - parasites that specialize in one particular crop and do not harm other plants on the site. The worm in the middle of raspberries most likely represents the larva of one of two such insects - a raspberry beetle or a raspberry fly.

Raspberry beetle

The Latin name for this raspberry pest is Byturus tomentosus. The imago has an oval body of small size (about 4 mm in length) of brown or grayish color, covered with short fibers, similar to wool. Eggs are white, in length do not exceed 1 mm. The larva is a yellowish worm (caterpillar) with a black head and body length up to 7 mm. Before pupation, the caterpillar changes color to a brighter, almost red. In the pupal phase, the beetle looks like a white curved arch cocoon of the same size as an adult.

Raspberry beetles never go far from the raspberry, but pupae hibernate not on a plant, but in the soil somewhere nearby. Having climbed to the surface in spring, adults immediately begin to actively eat green mass, so it is very easy to detect traces of their vital activity on the bush. Already at this stage, it is necessary to begin an active fight against the pest, not allowing the insect to remain viable until buds appear on the plant: it is the flower and ovary that are the place where the female lays her eggs, thus providing her offspring with both protection and a source of nutrition.

Important! Female raspberry beetle per season is able to lay up to 4 dozen eggs, and she does this not in the form of a common masonry, but plants each future “cub” in a personal berry. As a result, only one individual can destroy the harvest from an entire bush by its actions.

Larvae hatch from eggs about 10 days after laying the eggs and throughout the entire ripening period of the berry (sometimes up to 40 days) massively eat it up from the inside. The fruit as a result of such wrecking becomes ugly, small, loses its structure, color, and eventually disappears. In the early stages, traces of the defeat of the berry can be seen by the black dots appearing on its surface - the moves made by the caterpillar.The peculiarity of the life cycle of the raspberry beetle makes it safe for the second (autumn) crop of remont raspberries, because by this time the larva is already turning into a pupa.

Having eaten and developed to the necessary state, the caterpillar crawls from the berry to the soil, climbing into a depth of 5 to 20 cm, where it pupates and settles for wintering. Under adverse conditions (bad weather, mass competition, lack of a power source, etc.) pupa can remain viable in soil for two years, after waiting one season in a state of hibernation.

Raspberry fly

Raspberry stem fly (Latin name - Chortophila dentiens) - flying insecte, several millimeters larger than the size of the beetle Byturus tomentosus. The fly has a gray or yellow body, covered with small hairs, red eyes and transparent wings.

The imago does not do much harm to the bushes, eating, like bees, flower nectar or honey dew, but already in the middle of spring the insect begins to spawn, and the pest chooses young shoots of raspberries and blackberries, mainly located near the ground, as a place for the birth of future offspring .

Did you know? In folklore, viburnum and raspberry are the antipodes: the first symbolizes misfortune, bondage, deceit, life in a foreign land, and the second - on the contrary, homeland, happiness, freedom and carelessness. From here came the steady expression “life is raspberry,” meaning an excellent state of affairs.

Caterpillars hatching from eggs in about 5–8 days (depending on weather conditions) have a yellow, orange, or white body up to 5 mm long. Unlike the raspberry beetle, these larvae do not feed on the fruits, but on the green mass of the plant, causing it no less harm: the fruitless shoot deprived of the juice withers, and the berries cannot form on it.

Like Byturus tomentosus, a raspberry stem fly hibernates in soil near the main source of nutrition. A massive exit of imago in spring occurs after the final warming and usually coincides with the time of flowering of cherries. It is very important for the gardener to know this feature of the insect's life cycle in order to determine the optimal time for processing shrubs.

Grape leaf

Unlike the two pests described above, a bunch of leaves (the Latin name for the insect is Lobesia botrana) parasitizes mainly on grapes, although reaching the raspberry can cause significant damage to this crop.An adult is a small butterfly with a wingspan of 8 to 15 mm.

The front wings are colorful with a predominance of brown or olive-brown, covered with dark gray strokes and light spots of a fanciful shape. The hind wings are plain, gray in the center and darker at the edges. The egg is tiny, less than 1 mm in length, transparent, in the early phase has a light green hue, then changes color to yellow-brown. Larva is light green or yellow in length from 10 to 12 mm. The head of the caterpillar is brown.

Did you know? The ancient Roman scientist Pliny the Elder in the book "Natural History" named the unfamiliar Rubus idaeus berry discovered by him in Crete. The first word, apparently, emphasized the red color of the fruit (ruby), but idaeus connects raspberries with Ida - the Greek nymph, who, according to legend, fed the sweet berry of little Zeus and, wounding her hands on a thorny bush, painted it red.

In the pupal phase, the leaf folded into a brownish-yellow cocoon with a length of 5 to 6 mm. The first mass flight of adults begins in mid-spring and lasts from 15 to 35 days, but the insect forms up to three generations per season. Almost immediately after the start of flight, a period of mating and egg laying begins. On average, each female is able to lay about 80 eggs, but sometimes this number reaches 160.

The butterfly chooses buds for masonry (grapes, raspberries, currants and other garden crops), and individuals of the second and third generations lay eggs directly in the berries, less often - on leaves and shoots. In clutch there are usually from 2 to 5 eggs.

About 5-10 days after laying, a caterpillar emerges from the egg (subsequent generations pass the embryonic phase faster), which immediately begins to feed intensively, completely gnawing a flower or a berry from the inside. Having destroyed its first "home", the larva pulls a neighboring flower or fruit with silk thread and does the same procedure with it.

Important! One larva of a bunch of leaflets is capable of destroying from 4 to 6 dozen berries, that is, by its harmfulness, this pest even exceeds the “indicators” of the raspberry beetle. In the absence of an adequate reaction, the insect can kill at least a third of the crop, and sometimes all the raspberries on the site.

As a result, a malicious worm cobwebs several buds into a single web (hence the name of the parasite), creating a kind of nest for itself. At the end of this developmental phase, the larva is wrapped in a leaf and pupates there. The second and third generation of the pest parasitizes directly on the surface of the berries, gnawing holes in their skin and then making internal passages, eating up the sweet flesh. As a result, the raspberry fruit either dries or rots. (depending on the amount of precipitation), and the gray rot affecting the berries extends to neighboring fruits that are not damaged by the caterpillars. It takes the form of a chrysalis insect, climbing into perennial wood, felling foliage or organic debris gathering around the bush.

How to deal with worms in raspberries

The fight against worms that settled in raspberries is a futile task, because both the eggs and the larvae inside the berry are not accessible to the action of insecticides, and in addition, pesticides treatment of fruits, still used by some careless summer residents and unscrupulous farmers, turns the crop into a potential threat to the health of someone who dares to feast on them.

It is necessary to deal with raspberry pests before the female insect has time to lay eggs in a bud or ovary. You can do this by noticing the first signs of the appearance of a pest on the bushes, but, in addition, standard prophylactic measures are not superfluous.

Prevention

Knowing the features of the life cycle of the main raspberry pests, it is possible to create conditions under which it will not be necessary to resort to the use of potent insecticides.

Such preventive measures primarily include raspberry sanitization, which includes:

• regular pruning of damaged and old stems, and after removal, such branches must be removed from the site or burned, they should not be laid in compost pits;
• thorough removal of all organic residues (foliage, fallen fruits, weed grass, etc.) at the end of the season;
• digging the soil around the bushes in late autumn and early spring (larvae and pupae wintering in the ground, having appeared on the surface, either freeze out or become prey for birds and, thus, are neutralized).

Preventive measures also include treatment of shrubs and soil under them with preparations with a minimum degree of toxicity. To cope with the invasion of pests, such tools will not help, but they are quite able to scare off insects before they firmly settle in the area.

Important! The raspberry root system is very close to the surface of the earth, so you can’t dig the soil directly at the base of the bush, this can destroy the plant.

For processing, experienced gardeners recommend using:

• ordinary hot water (heated to a temperature of + 70 ... + 80 ° C) - this method is used in early spring, while the raspberries have not yet swollen buds, in this case, careful treatment of the trunk and the trunk section with boiling water will harm the plant;
• baking soda solution (concentration of 2 tbsp. l per 10 l of water);
• tansy infusion (750 g of dried grass per 10 liters of water);
• Bordeaux mixture (three percent solution);
• weak potassium permanganate solution (0.5 g of the drug per 10 l of water);
• charcoal or tobacco dust (introduced into the soil at the same time as digging or loosening for active disinfection).

No less important from the point of view of infection prevention is the observance of crop rotation rules. Raspberries should not be planted in the area where solanaceous crops (tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, sweet and bitter peppers), as well as strawberries and strawberries, were grown before. Good precursors for the plant are pumpkin and cereal.

Planting pests from raspberries will help to plant nearby onions, garlic, red elderberries or marigolds. Partially the same function can be performed by plants with a rich and spicy aroma, for example, celery, basil, coriander (cilantro) or decorative flowers - peonies, petunia, etc.

Best Pest Controls

One of the most effective and safe ways to deal with raspberry beetle is to mechanically remove it from the bush.. To conduct this event, in the early morning the soil under the plant is lined with newspaper (some gardeners use an open and turned upside down umbrella), then carefully shake each shoot, and the pests that have fallen from the branches are burned or drowned.

Important! It is recommended to collect beetles at a time when the average air temperature is + 12 ° C: at this time, insects have already woken up and reached the surface, but at the same time remain drowsy and inactive.

You can also deal with raspberry flies mechanically, but here you have to act more radically. If young shoots begin to fade for no apparent reason, the affected shoots should be urgently cut to the very root and burn immediately. Thus, sometimes it is possible to get rid of the larvae and prevent them from leaving in the soil for wintering.

Gardeners recommend processing raspberry from pests in 3-4 receptions:

• in early spring "on a green cone";
• at the same time as cherry blossoms (to destroy raspberry flies);
• at the beginning of flowering bush;
• in mid-July (to destroy subsequent generations of raspberry flies, leafworms, aphids and other pests, whose peak activity occurs in a later period).

The degree of toxicity used for processing pesticides directly depends on how much time remains before the harvest.

So, in early spring, the use of potent insecticides is allowed, such as, for example:

• "Spark" - 1 tablet per 10 liters of water;
• "Fufanon" - 10 ml per 10 liters of water;
• "Confidor" - 2.5 ml per 10 liters of water;
• Inta-Vir — 1 tablet per 10 liters of water;
• Kinmix - 2.5 ml per 10 liters of water.

One portion of the working solution will be enough to process raspberries, consisting of 60–70 adult bushes.

After the beginning of flowering and fruit setting for pest control, it is better to use modern biological insecticidal preparations that are harmless both to humans and to beneficial insects (especially bees) visiting the site during this period of time. Among such funds, it is worth mentioning Fitoverm, Actofit, Pseudobacterin-2, Trichodermin, Fitosporin-M, Lepidocide, and many others.

Important! The raspberry, in which the worm was found, must in no case be thrown to the ground next to the bush, since the pest in this case will most likely move to the next berry.

It is necessary to breed the product strictly according to the instructions and remember that bioinsecticides provide relatively short protection and are not able to destroy a large population of pests, but their repeated use does not harm the environment, therefore, to achieve the desired effect, it is necessary to use such insecticides in the early stages of damage and repeat treatment at least three times with a break of 2 weeks, if necessary, each time changing the drug.

The worm raspberry crop, in fact, differs little from its complete absence, since the berry spoiled by the pest from the inside is unsuitable neither for fresh consumption, nor for canning or preparing any culinary dishes. Therefore, the standard and mandatory element of care for this shrub is the implementation of strict control over the identification of the first signs of parasites on the plant, and even better - the prevention of conditions conducive to this.

Fortunately, modern science puts at the disposal of the gardener a lot of relatively safe and at the same time quite effective means of preserving the crop in complete integrity, it is only necessary to take the necessary measures in time for this.