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Leaf Miners on Orange Tree

9 years ago

Need some advice. What should I do if my whole orange tree is in infested with leaf miners?

Comments (7)

  • 9 years ago

    I assume it is in the ground. Bringing your post to the top, hopefully the experts will chime in. I never had leaf miners on my trees. Post some pics if you can.

  • 9 years ago

    Look for an insecticide containing spinosad. Myself, I use a systemic containing imidacloprid. It's easy and works great. Just measure out the correct amount for your tree, mix with water and water in at the base. This takes months to uptake into the tree but understand the leaves are already damaged and are still working, it just looks ugly. Those leaves will drop next year. There is some controversy about imidacloprid damaging bee colony's and neither choice is organic so use with that understanding.

  • 9 years ago

    When I started with my citrus collection, I got some that were invested with leaf miners. I killed every single one in the leafs and never had a problem again. But I'm in michigan and no idea if the CLM could survive here. I have leaf miner on other plants but not on citrus. I don't know where you are located or how big your tree is but here is a good article to read.I hope you find it helpful.

    http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/r107303211.html

  • 9 years ago

    This year seems to be unusually bad in my area for citrus leaf miners. I have began spraying the newest growth on my newly planted trees with spinosad. I have chosen to use non-organic products only minimally, I don't use glyphosate around my trees for example. It may be perfectly harmless but I hope to live a loooong time and I just don't want to expose myself to something for which we might not fully understand the chronic effects. I am avoiding the spinosad/honey bee question by applying spinosad on non-flowering trees and I think my bigger trees will do fine. If you notice, your trees probably put out a couple of flushes in the spring before the CLM becomes active and maybe a flush in the fall after the CLM "season" is over.

  • 9 years ago

    Thanks a lot for the replies. I guess I should of gave everyone more information about my location plus even pictures so I apologize for that. This is my very first forum ever so I'm new to this but I live in Houston TX and here are some pictures of my orange tree. The tree was already planted here when I bought the house back in 2012 and every year it produced lots of oranges and they actually tasted pretty good. This time of year I should at least see the flowers like the previous years but I don't see not one so far. I'm not sure if it's because of the leaf miners or maybe because back in January we had a deep freeze here that I thought killed the tree. All the leafs fell but as you can see they grew back.

  • 9 years ago

    CLM can certainly add to the shock of re-growing after a severe freeze. And shock can stop the tree from producing. What has been your care regimen..? as far as feeding?

    You may want to remove the grass in a larger area under the tree... the grass is taking nutrients that the tree could use. The new leaves do show adequate water and N.

    BTW: the Imidacloprid soak will also control any grubs in that lawn area.