Do you grow apples, pears or quinces? Have you found that ugly brown excrement, frass, oozing from your fruit, then cut them open to find tunnels and sometimes a moving codling moth grub?

If so, read on to learn how to counteract the problem –if your fruit trees grow in Tasmania, and you haven’t already done so, then it is probably time for you to act (depending on your microclimate).

The GoodLife Permaculture site provides a wonderful and simple explanation of the codling moth cycle and what can be done about it. Read more here.

This GlobalNetAcademy site offers additional information.

For years I have pasted horticultural glue on one side of cardboard strips and wrapped them around the trunks of my pear and apple trees, and later found beautiful specimens of codling moth larvae trapped in there over time. But in recent years I have not thought carefully enough about when to do the wrapping. Judging by the volume of attacks on my pears and apples last year, I have failed. So in the first days of September this year, when I noticed the first buds about to unfurl their first leaves on my pear tree, I dispensed with the cardboard and directly taped the trunks and applied the sticky glue.

Will this work? Am I too late? Have the moths already laid their eggs? Only time will tell. Wait and watch. That’s the plan.