I was thrilled that I have one maypop plant out of all the seeds I tried. But now something is chewing the leaves to pieces, and the poor plant is only about 5" tall!! I don't want to lose it before the gulf frits come along, and I didn't see them last year until late summer; this plant will be gone by then, at this rate!! Would it be bad to use Safer soap on the leaves right now to be rid of the problem? But then, I'm thinking, if I have just the one plant and I'm inundated with GF cats, I won't have enough leaves to feed them all. Any help, suggestions, encouragement, welcome.......
Maypop leaf chewer, please help!!!
Thea...
Have you noticed any beetles on the leaves? I had passion flower flea beetles chew up a couple of different species of passion flower vines last year. The eggs look like the pointy sulphur butterfly eggs but they are orange in color. The larva look like hairstreak caterpillars - whitish to pink with black heads.
The beetles are orangish with yellow stripes.
I was lucky that the butterflies hadn't made use of the passion vines so I mixed up some soapy water and sprayed that on them for a couple of days rinsing them off well in between sprays. That got rid of the beetles fairly quickly.
~ Cat
This link shows the adult beetle, larva and eggs.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/go/1611/
Flea beetles or an orange insect that I never have ID'd. Some of mine look like they'd been hit by tiny buckshot. Wouldn't mind the GF cats that were eating it...but it's mainly the other things.