Who or what is eating the leaves on my Marion (black) Berries??

[RickF]

Ok.. So you've seen my blackberries before and they're doing quite well despite the heat here in the high desert of So-Cal.. It's gonna be a toasty 99F here today -- providing shade goes a long way to help these plants survive here.

Regardless, something is coming at night and having a vast meal of the leaves of my plants -- and they're expanding into my one raspberry bush and other varieties of blackberries.. They're not touching my blueberries or other crops although I did notice this morning that something had munched on a few leaves of my sunflower plants in the backyard which seemed spared from any pests until now.

I believe it's probably something that flies -- moths or ?? Its definitely happening at night though, as far as I can tell, and I see nothing crawling on the plants such as worms or anything like that.

Thoughts??

 

[Nyboy]

wow some thing is hungry. Put out a bowl of beer, if slugs you will find drown ones in beer

 

[RickF]

No snails here .. Way too hot.. I've lived here a year and 3 months and never seen one..

 

[Carol Dee]

Do you have Japanese beetles? They did damage like this to our green beans and raspberries.

 

[RickF]

Not to my knowledge.. But, I did just see a very small pale green grass hopper on one of them.. I'm going to go out and get Pyrethrum and give that a try.. I've got some insecticidal oil (natural) that I used last year but it didn't do well on these plants -- almost like it suffocates them slowly..

 

[Carol Dee]

They look like this,

 

[RickF]

I don't believe I've seen anything like that around here.. Lord willing, I'll be applying some of the above Pyrethrum after the sun goes down tonight and see how that fares. I do see little poops on some of the leaves here and there... I'll be checking the leaves later tonight with a flashlight to see what I find..

 

[thistlebloom]

I betcha it's grasshoppers. I am plagued with them every year. The juveniles don't fly and can blend right in with the foliage. That eating pattern is familiar.

 

[flowerbug]

check in the early morning and around the base of the plant see if you can see the droppings and then look up from those piles (the fresher ones may even be green). some worms may blend in so well they are very hard to see. also check around the base of the plant, any rocks, boards, edges and see if any worms/caterpillars are hanging out there... grasshoppers is a good bet, but perhaps other worms are around. if it was japanese beetles you'd see them in the early morning.

 

[Collector]

My thoughts are grasshoppers also.