I have attached several pictures of my currant bush. I have two that are so loaded with berries that I have had to stake them. The problem is there are ants on the bushes and also what is going on with the leaves?
What is causing all of these problems? Does that mean that I shouldn't make jam out of the berries? How come there are so many berries? I didn't have this problem last year and I made beautiful jam.
I checked on the internet and they say I have aphids. I made a solution of 3 parts warm water, 1 part oil and a teaspoon of dish soap. I have sprayed the whole bush and then I will see what happens. I could also cut off the infected branches and put them in a sealed plastic bag to kill them.
Miry, your currant berries appear to be infested with currant fruit fly, or gooseberry maggots, Epochra canadensis. This is a difficult pest to control, as it appears that there is no registered pesticide available. However, a Malathion spray right after the bush finishes blossoming works for me. Malathion is registered for the control of currant sawfly maggots; so I can't see any harm in using it. Malathion will also control aphids. It's too late to do anything about the infested fruit this year, except that I would recommend picking off all of the fruit clusters and disposing of them far away from the currant bushes.
If you decide to use Malathion in the future, Miry, be aware of its toxicity. According to Wikipedia "If malathion is used in an indoor, or other poorly ventilated environment, it can seriously poison the occupants living or working in this environment." Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malathion#Risks
Thanks for all the input. I won't use anything to get rid of them. I started working on getting rid of all the fruit today. It will take me a couple of days. Some of them where the leaves are different colours or curled up I am just cutting the branches off and disposing of them in a tightly closed bag. It seems to me this is a bad year for bugs infestation. I noticed that something is eating the leaves on my hazel nut tree. Also my angel's trumpet leaves but I also noticed several lady bugs on there too. I do know that they are my friends.
