Now that Dursban and PDB Moth Crystals are no longer available, what should I use to treat my peach and other fruit trees for borers?
Lesser Peach Tree Borers will attack peach, cherry, plumb, prune, nectarine, apricot, and related ornamentals including flowering plum, peach, cherry, and almond trees. Symptoms include masses of gum exuding from around the tree trunk base from 1 foot above to 3 inches below the soil surface. There are usually bits of sawdust mixed with the gum. Larvae become active in the spring and can be found under the tree’s bark close to the ground and are about 1 inch long, whitish in color with dark brown heads. These insects can kill your tree within a few seasons if not treated. The Colorado Cooperative extension has a good article on this, including how to use the PDB Moth balls should you still have some, Monitoring for the flight activity of the adult moths can be done with pheromone traps, which attract the males with an artificial scent that mimics the females sex pheromone; contact local garden centers to see if they carry peach tree borer pheromone traps. These can, in some cases, trap
