6/30/08- Plants 1, 2, and 4 now stink! Yes, they now have a distinct smell to them… it's not too bad and not too strong, though. I also reported that these plants were sticky a couple entries ago. Well, now they are really sticky. The "dew" is now almost like sap and is now difficult to remove from my fingers with just water.
Over the last couple of days I have noticed that the larger plants, mainly 1, 2, and 4 have developed some sort of damage. First, I noticed a couple of brown spots develop on a number of leaves. This was about seven days ago. Over the last couple of days though, I began to notice that the brown spots became holes. This was and still is very prominent on the younger emerging leaves. At first, I thought it might have been sunburn or just some natural occurrence, but today I found the perpetrator: Caterpillars!
I do not know the species of caterpillar (moth/butterfly), but I do know that these like to hang out and munch on the grapevine and numerous flower plants that are located around my house. Luckily, the damage to the devil's claws is not significant. So far, I have found only two caterpillars on the devil's claws. The damage is mostly scattered and very minimal, the holes being only around a millimeter in diameter. Based on how big the holes are, I am guessing that the caterpillars find the sticky, hairy leaves unfavorable.
Now the question is how do I fight back? Even though the plants have suffered very little, I am still going to take action to prevent further pests. The easiest and most effective way I can think of is to go chemical on their little behinds. The thing is, I have not read anything on how devil's claws take insecticide. So, I will have to test and see how they do. Here is my plan… I have a systemic insecticide from Ortho that I use on my CPs. It is effective at killing chewers and suckers.
Here is a link to it for those of you that may want the specs. The product is called Ortho's Systemic Insect Killer. It is 8% Acephate and recommends 3 tablespoons of the concentrate per gallon of water for "other insects" such as caterpillars.
Since I don't know how the plant will react to this treatment, I will have to run a test application first before treating all the plants. I will choose an affected leaf on one of the older plants and treat only that leaf. To mark it I will tie a bright yellow string around its petiole. Then, I will spray the insecticide on the leaf surface and below the leaf as well. I will apply the treatment once the patch is no longer receiving full sun, which is about 7PM today. After this treatment, I will wait a couple of days to see how that individual leaf responds to the insecticide. I will probably wait for 3 to 5 days. If all goes well, then I will proceed to treat plants 1, 2, and 4. I'll report back here at that time.
Let the games begin.
7/1/08- (Morning) Well, I changed my experiment just a tad bit once I got home yesterday. Instead of applying the treatment to one leaf I decided to treat three leaves. Two of them were caterpillar-damaged leaves from plant #4 while the other was undamaged (healthy) from plant #1. I applied the insecticide liberally on the top and underneath the leaves. This morning they seemed fine.
More good news rolling in... I am expecting plant #1 to flower soon; either today or early tomorrow. It has finally developed the signature flower stalk most of these plant have. Once mature, the plant's main stem will form a Y shape. At the point where the main stem meets the two secondary stems (in the center of the Y), a tiny cluster of premature flower buds form. Once the plant is old enough a thin stem (flower stalk) will grow from this point, taking up with it the tiny flower buds. From here flowers will begin to grow and eventually bloom. Plant #1 is experiencing what is described here. The stalk is already a couple of inches tall and one flower from the cluster is on the verge of blooming.
7/2/08- Two days have passed since I applied the insecticide. The three leaves showed no signs of harm. Today, I found a handful of caterpillars on the large plants. As of today plant #4 has suffered the most, but the overall damaged is still minimal.
Because of the additional caterpillars and lack of damage signs from the insecticide, I decided to go ahead with the full application ahead of schedule. Again, once the patch was no longer receiving full sun (~7PM) I filled up my spray bottle and got to it. Plants 1, 2, 4, and 5 were fully treated. The other plants were not treated because they are still too small and have not shown any signs of damage. I tried to spray the foliage thoroughly, but avoided the flower clusters in order to prevent damage to them.
7/3/08- (Morning) The treated plants still seem fine after yesterday's full application. This morning, I went to check on them briefly and saw them leaning over towards the morning sun as usual. I really hope the systemic will work well. As a precaution, I will be doing a repeat application to all of the plants (including the smaller ones) later in the month.
We have finally entered July and are in the midst of summer. July is known for bringing temperatures that get to 100F+ day after day after day here in the high desert. This month will allow me to test the heat tolerance of the plants on a continuous, long-term level. Hopefully, they can tough it out.
If I see any reaction to the treatment, I will post it here in this post. Otherwise if all goes well, I will post another entry sometime later as a new post. Thanks for reading and have a great 4th of July!