Army Worms

[Lineman North Florida]

If you live in the South it's that time, I had to spray for them this morning, I wasn't done but an hour and it rained but I did spray contact killer so it should have got the job done, for anyone who hasn't ever seen the damage that these spawns of Satan can do, they can turn a beautiful hay field into a brown field of stems in less than a week.

 

[Tinhack]

It's been years since I've seen the "angle hair" nests in trees around here. I was thinking they were irradicated. Seems like they just moved on. Yeah, they can kill trees too. Ravenous little creatures. I keep the birds fed around here so maybe that helped. I'll keep a watch out. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[paulsharvey]

Here they really really like persimmon trees, and to a lesser extent wild cherry's. A lot of the time the tree survive, but you loose a lot of branches every year. Really don't like those dang things.


Edit; I Asssume we are talking about the same silk nests in trees, with the nasty little worms, but we call them Tent Worms

 

[old and tired]

Forest Tent caterpillars are a different species vs Armyworms - armyworms are much bigger and attach (eat) lots of different host plants. Armworms don't make "tents" - they eat and move on to eat something else...

Armyworms could be yellow strip AW, Beet AW, Fall AW, Southern AW... plus more...

 

[sixdogs]

We had grub/Japanese beetles problems on a gargantuan scale in our yard. They would feed on the soybean fields and live in our grass. We tried all the commercial stuff.

By accident, my seed guy was telling me about a new(?) product that will eventually be mandated to replace all the homeowner chemical things for grubs. The chemical is "acelypryn" and I bought it because he said it wouldn't hurt bees or worms. The MDSS said almost no personal protection requirements were needed.

The product was mixed into bags of fertilizer @0.067% and apparently works by somehow interfering with the shell of the grub. I don't know but I put it down every spring at 150-200 lbs per acre and I have had zero Japanese beetles.

Better than that, when army worms invaded this area last year, many people I know had their entire lawn turn brown while mine completely escaped. It would be too expensive to do a field but I wish I knew earlier to have saved my fruit trees.

I've written about this on the TBN before so that might be worth a look. FYI

 

[Lineman North Florida]

I was gone for 4 days and couldn't check on one of my fields and when I got back and pulled in the gate my heart sank, army worm infestation, good thing is this field didn't have a lot of growth but they got everything that was there. For those of you that have never dealt with them this is what an infestation is and how quickly they can wipe out a hay field, you may have to zoom in on the pictures to see them but it will give you an idea.

 

[jyoutz]

I was gone for 4 days and couldn't check on one of my fields and when I got back and pulled in the gate my heart sank, army worm infestation, good thing is this field didn't have a lot of growth but they got everything that was there. For those of you that have never dealt with them this is what an infestation is and how quickly they can wipe out a hay field, you may have to zoom in on the pictures to see them but it will give you an idea. View attachment 1013346View attachment 1013348

Wow. That’s awful. I’ve never seen them. I guess we don’t have them where I live.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

Wow. That’s awful. I’ve never seen them. I guess we don’t have them where I live.

Be very thankful, this has been a really bad year with them, seems like it's been constant, I smoked them today with about 2 ounces of Serpent pesticide to the acre, there is a real satisfaction walking across the field when you are done spraying and seeing them flipping and flopping on the ground doing the dying flutter.

 

[Lineman North Florida]

This is what I like to see, you know that your spray job worked.