I’m looking for recommendations to control bag worms. I have a agroforestry plot that is around 1 year old and it’s completely infested by bag worms. This is the first time I’ve ever seen such a think in Haiti. I’ve seen scattered bag worms in a few of the gardens but not like this.
They’re everywhere and on almost every plant in the garden. I wonder if there’s a predator that is normally in other gardens that’s missing here. The worms are even all over the walls of our house.
Any ideas on how to get rid of them?
The picture is on a papaya tree in the garden.
The Ichneumonid wasp is a predator of bagworms. A study from the University of Chicago (I think) of an evergreen tree planting, interplanted flowers from the Aster family such as Shasta Daisy and gazania that attracted the wasps. There was a 70% reduction. Any way to attract birds to your plots to feed on the bagworms?
1 Like
Why not try planting Tithonia as a green manure/covercrop? It is a member of the Aster plant family (potential to attract the parasitic wasps), accumulates phosphorus and adds biomass. The seed can be collected and used on other fields or sold.
1 Like
That’s good to know that tithonia might attract the wasps because this food forest has lots of tithonia diversifolia in it. Hopefully it’ll attract the wasps.
I’ve tried to spay them but it does nothing. I also need to be carful what I spray because I have lots of papaya ripening right now and I don’t want pesticides on them. I’ve heard the only time pesticides can get them is when they’re young in their life cycle. That’s pretty easy to know when that time is in temperate climates, but much harder here. I think I’ve noticed waves of hatching multiple times this year.
If you’ve been in Haiti a while and this is the first time you’ve seen this, you may just be experiencing an outbreak that hopefully won’t last. Weather conditions, food availability, etc. can lead to a huge explosion in pest populations. The natural enemies may be there, it just takes longer for their populations to catch up. Planting more pollinator plants definitely could help though.
It sounds like you have a pretty large area, but handpicking the bagworms off the trees and dropping them in soapy water can be very effective. If you have a group of kids around, you could get them to help! Otherwise pesticides that target caterpillars can work, but as you mentioned, they only work before the caterpillars have formed the bags. If you have access to Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) those products typically have no preharvest restrictions, so you can use them up to the day of harvest. You’d need to check the label, however, to make sure whatever product you use is approved for that crop.
1 Like