What's turning my rasberry leaves to lace?

[Dave & Kate N Wales]

Can anybody advise us on this?
Last year all of our tayberry bush leaves were left threadbare by some critter and this year the lower leaves of our newly planted rasberries are going the same way. the leaves are left looking like lace with all the flesh gone, just the veins left behind. We have searched for bugs but can't see any lurking.

Any suggestions would be welcome and thanks in advance.
Dave & Kate

[gojiberry]

I will be interested to find out what causes the lace effect as I have a few of mine like that. Fortunately it isn't a serious problem for me at the moment as it only happens on the odd leaf and has not affected the growth or fruiting of the plants.

Ian

[sarah_h]

I think it could be a couple of things. I had the same problem last year and found rasberry sawfly caterpillars; small 5mm white with dark head. KILL KILL KILL and a I had a small infestation of greenfly KILL KILL KILL.

Most likely it's the caterpillars doing the bulk of the damage. I was on patrol this year every day looking for these things with one thing on my mind, you can guess what that was.

[srodders]

I'd say it was sawfly - my solomon's seal gets mullered by them every year. I never see any of them - only the effects.

[Dave & Kate N Wales]

thankyou and what I read.

Thanks for that. I've just been researching the sawfly on the net and it certainly looks like the damage they do. Apparently similar damage can be caused by Raspberry fruitworm but I think not in this case.

The recommendations are to pick off affected leaves early on though the consensus is that sawfly are rarely a big problem.

If it is a big problem, apparently you should spray - don't know with what though, I'd like to use organic deterents and one site said derris powder. Lets hope it dosnt come to that.

[Two_Sheds]

I'd like to use organic deterents .

Birds.
Try hanging some fat balls amongst your raspberries to attract blue tits, which will also eat the caterpillars.

Also, hoe the soil to expose the hibernating pupae to the birds.

[Dave & Kate N Wales]

found the blighters

Thanks for the fatballs tip, that should help as we've now spotted the culprits we think, tiny, hardly visible (about 1mm at the moment), little caterpillars. Presumably they'll get bigger.

[Victoria26]

those little caterpillars are on my peas - They've eaten all the leaves and burrowed into the pods! All in the space of 2 days!

I need to get a spray or something!

[21again]

The swines were all over what is left of my young goosberry plant.

I only discovered them this afternoon, it was normal this morning, this afternoon they had eaten half of the leaves if not more.



I got a paper towel to squash them in as I was a bit squeamish after squashing the first one inbetween my fingers.



It looked like my daughter had used it to wipe her green paints up with after I had finished.