Glue or Grease bands on the Fruit Trees

Another sign of Autumn - apart from all the leaves dropping off the deciduous trees - is that it's time to apply the Glue bands to the fruit trees.

This is a simple mechanical, non-pesticide method of controlling winter moth caterpillars. 

It is done by quite literally applying a band of sticky stuff to the trunks, the idea being that the moths, which have overwintered at ground level, try to walk up, and get stuck. A bit like fly-paper, but for fruit trees. 

Why don't the moths fly up? Because the eggs - which turn into the caterpillars, which eat the buds, therefore destroying the fruit before it even starts - are wingless. They can't fly, they have to walk.

There are two main methods: either you paint it on, using a disposable brush: the stuff is impossible to remove, so you have to accept that you are going to sacrifice at least one brush, and quite possibly some of your own  hair (more of that later), when applying it. Or, you wrap a pre-made band of it around the trunk, which appears to be a more civilised method, but does - as you would expect - have its own set of problems.

The paint-on glue needs no explanation: just open the tin or container, dip in the sacrificial brush, and slap it on: it's normally applied fairly low to the ground, for two reasons: as trees tend to branch out higher up, it's easier to coat just one trunk, than to have to coat four or five of them: and it makes sense to get the defences in place sooner rather than later, so that you catch all the little blighters before they find cracks and crevices in which to lay their eggs.

Right, in case you can't visualise it, here is one I did earlier:

This is a run of fairly young fruit trees, just a couple of years old, so they are skinny little things!

The bright green strip is the grease band, and the darker lines are the green garden string with which I tied to tops and bottoms of the bands.

And yes, there is a matching grease band applied to the support cane... for the obvious reason! If wingless female moths can walk up a tree trunk, they can certainly walk up a support cane, so you need to protect both of them.

Applying the grease band is straightforward enough - well, it is, on paper, at least! When you open the pack, it contains a long, long strip of what looks like paper or plastic, folded in half lengthwise. All the sticky part is safely in the middle. 

Some of them have a plastic liner over the sticky section, some of them are literally just folded in half, sticky side to sticky side.

Whichever one you have, cut off a piece long enough to wrap all the way around your tree (or cane) with a bit of overlap.

Peel apart the two "halves" of the strip, revealing the icky sticky stuff within. There is usually a margin of non-sticky material, which gives you something to get hold of.

Wrap this, sticky side out, around the stem, overlapping it, and pressing it together - the overlap will, of course, stick to itself. 

There, job done!

Hmmm. Yes, it's never that simple, is it? OK, before you start, assemble all the things you are going to need. That includes the grease band itself, scissors, string, and some white spirit and a rag.

First problem - as soon as you peel it apart, it starts sticking to everything in sight. Your clothes, you, your hair, itself, a passing cat, a falling leaf: so don't unpeel it until you are in position, ready to apply it.

Second problem - you have to feed the incredibly sticky piece of material through the gap between tree and cane: or, depending on your situation, between the tree and the fence. If you are lucky, your only problem is to get it around the back of the trunk... word of advice, if there are tall weeds around the base of the fruit trees, clear them away before starting!

Third problem: having manoeuvred it into position, "overlap the grease band and press the edges together" she said... it sticks to your fingers, it sticks to itself, it argues, swears at you, refuses to go where you want it, and ends up in a baggy, floppy ring around the trunk. 

 NB try not to do this task on a windy day...

All is not lost - this is where the string comes in. Once it is more-or-less in position, tie it top and bottom, quite tightly, with string.
 

Don't worry about a few creases along the way - the important part is to get it close to the trunk, otherwise the wingless female moths just walk right through underneath it!

Here - left - you can see how mine are bunched up and crinkled, but that doesn't matter because the string has pulled them tight. As the moths are walking uphill, rather than downhill, creases at the upper edge are not really that important, but if you get a similar effect at the bottom edge, don't worry - they might walk in underneath that loose edge, but they can't get any further.

Now, by this time, your fingers are coated in sticky glue, the string is stuck to you, the scissors are covered in sticky stuff, and you can't find the piece which you just cut off, ready for the next one... and then you find it stuck to your hair, or the back of your coat....

My answer to this, assuming that you are carrying out this task on a dry day, is to dab my fingers lightly onto some dry, dusty soil every so often. This completely de-sticks your fingers, so you can use the scissors and tie the string without difficulty.

Oh, before I go any further, take another look at that last photo: can you see that the tree has a bright green band on it, but the cane does not?  Look closer, you'll see that the can has a transparent band around it. That's last year's innovation, invisible grease bands!

Presumably someone complained to the suppliers that they didn't like looking at bright green plastic all through the winter, so it was produced on transparent plastic. It's applied in exactly the same way, and at first I thought I preferred it, because it is, indeed, much less visible.

But after it had been in place for a few months (these photos are from this year, but I do this every year), I noticed that it was covered in dead critters, and it looked black and horrible. Plus, I couldn't instantly see if I had covered every tree and every cane... so on balance, I prefer the Hi-vis version.

So, where were we? Oh yes, dabbing our fingers in dusty earth to de-sticky them.

It works a treat, but you do get black dirty fingerprints all over the grease bands - as you can see here, left!

This also shows how impossible it is to apply the grease bands without touching them!

Once you have tied the last knot, trimmed off the last of the long string ends, cleared up all the rubbish, tracked down all the offcuts which are sticking to your backside, your boots, the fence, the cat, the dog... finally, get ready to clean up your hands.

The "dust bowl" trick works perfectly, but under the layer of dust, you are very sticky indeed, and this is where the white spirit comes in. Use the white spirit and the old rag to clean up your sticky fingers, before you attempt to wash them. Soap and water will not shift grease band glue!

Your final job is to make a note in your diary to remove the grease bands next spring: partly because you don't want to kill the any beneficial insects which also walk up and down the trunks (although grease bands are quite successful at catching - and therefore killing - ants...) but mostly because, when the tree starts to grow again in spring, the string which you tied so tightly around the grease bands will throttle them.

So it's important to remove the old grease bands every year.

Oh, unless you use the grease paint, of course, in which case you don't have to remove it: but of course, you do have to look at it all year, and it does remain sticky for a long, long time, which can be a problem if you need to weed around the base of the tree in question, as it will still - even at the end of summer - be sticky enough to grab your hair, your gloves, your shoelaces.....
 

Did you enjoy this article? Did you find it useful? Would you like me to answer your own, personal, gardening question? Become a Patron - just click here - and support me! Or use the Donate button for a one-off donation. If just 10% of my visitors gave me a pound a month, I'd be able to spend a lot more time answering all the questions!!