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Question & Answer

We are discussing Gardening, Growing and Green Thumbs!
With Brian Walters, Diana O'Brien and Pauline Cornish

Question:
I grow quite a lot of Geraniums in pots but the flowers on some of them didn’t open up properly last year.

Answer:
Diana - I suspect that the culprit is the larva of a small moth known as the Geranium Plume Moth, which unfortunately seems to have arrived in Australia some ten years ago from California.

The moth itself is only tiny about 18mm in length. In flight it resembles a feathery mosquito and when it comes rest, with its wings extended looks like a small aeroplane, pointed at both ends. It seems to appear more frequently from mid-summer on.

However, it is the even smaller caterpillar of the plume moth that does the damage, boring holes into the buds of both foliage and flowers thus spoiling any potential bloom.

Dipel is a recommended bacterial based spray specifically for use on all kinds of caterpillars that chew holes in ornamental plants.

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