Among the most common pests of the garden can not distinguish gooseberry moth, which spoils a lot of harvest every year.
What kind of insect it is, what is its life cycle and how to deal with it - we will tell further.
How does it look
Gooseberry moth is a small gray butterfly with a wingspan of up to 0.3 cm. The front pair has a gray color with brown stripes and white scales, and the back one is much lighter than the front and has a black edging.
The caterpillars of the pest are somewhat smaller and reach a length of about 1.2-1.4 cm. The caterpillar has a bright body, on which dark, blurred bands are clearly visible.
The anal and thoracic plates are brown and the head is black. The brown pupa of the pest reaches 9 mm in length and has 8 curved spines on the cremaster. 
She spends the whole winter in the topmost layer of soil, and with the arrival of spring and the appearance of buds, butterflies appear on the gooseberries and currants from the cocoons.
Did you know? The moth butterfly can live not only on plants, but also on animals. For example, she feels great in the wool of a sloth, who leads a sedentary lifestyle.
What harm
Basically, the caterpillars eat the pulp and seeds of berries, with the result that for a short period of time one caterpillar can kill 14 currant berries and 6 gooseberry berries.
Damaged and entangled with cobweb fruits become brown in color and dry out quickly. Thus, with the invasion of the moth, the entire crop is under threat.
Life cycle
Pupae of the pest spend the winter in the spider cocoons located in cracks or in the surface of the soil, not far from the currant bushes and gooseberries. The period of formation of buds on the plant is characterized by a massive departure of butterflies, which lasts almost a month.
At the end of the flowering period of the bushes the pest lays the eggs inside the flowers. Only one female can leave up to 200 eggs, distributing them two per flower. After 10 days, caterpillars emerge from the clutch, which, in search of food, gnaw buds and reach the fruit ovary. 
If there are several caterpillars in one bud, then one of them will soon move to the nearest empty bud. Affected parts of the plant are covered with spider web.
The development and active feeding of the caterpillars lasts about 1 month, after which they will be fully prepared for pupation: they sink into the ground and are covered with a gray dense cocoon right at the base of the bushes. This period usually coincides with the ripening of the berries affected by the pest plants.
Only those specimens, to which the fire still reached, prematurely change color, and then rot or dry, and continuing to hang in the web. For the entire season, only one generation of gooseberry moth develops.
Read also about such garden pests: Colorado beetles, honey bears, slugs, ants, wireworms.
Risk group
As the name implies, gooseberry prefers gooseberries, but it feels good on currants or even raspberries. 
In all these cases, they gnaw outside the ovary and unripe fruits, and also eat away the seeds (on the gooseberry). Other crops in the garden or in the garden fire is not terrible.
Did you know? The moth is still considered the only organism that has the ability to digest wax, which is facilitated by the presence in the body of a special enzyme caterpillar.
Signs of a fire moth
It is easy to find this pest on a plant; it is enough just to inspect the bush, paying special attention to the berries on it. So, on the fruits you can find small holes, from which relatively thin cobwebs stretch to the neighboring ones.
It will take quite a bit of time, and such spoiled fruit will be much more. If you take a closer look at the lump of cobwebs on the gooseberries, then up to six berries can be inside it, some of which will be completely fresh, while others will be dried out and rotten. As for the currant, in a similar tangle, there are often up to 12 berries. 
Having parted the discovered "nest" and having opened the largest and healthiest looking fruit, a surprise will be waiting for you inside it: along with the uneaten remains of seeds, there is usually a rather long (about 1 cm) bright green caterpillar of the small tail with a black head.
Over time, some of these eaten away fruits will only increase in size, and the caterpillars will gradually leave the berries and go down under the bush. Usually they do not crawl away and are located 30 cm from the stem of the plant.
Read also about such gooseberry pests:
Fighting gooseberry fodder
Of course, if you find a small moth on a currant or gooseberry bushes, you will be interested in how you can effectively deal with it to save your crop.
There are several common methods, but it is best to perform timely prevention. 
Prevention
Preventive measures to combat the described pest mainly consist in timely mechanical gathering of damaged berries and ovaries, on which traces of ophthalmic or moth bones are clearly visible.
This action will save the rest of the harvest from their persistent attention. All collected pests are usually destroyed with boiling water.
Important! It is necessary to learn to recognize damaged fruits in a timely manner: usually these berries turn red before, and their tops quickly begin to rot.
In addition, make it a rule to regularly inspect other plants adjacent to currants or gooseberries, since the same raspberry can be a source of fire. 
And of course, you shouldn’t forget about the agrotechnology of growing plants, because when weakened, the bushes are more susceptible to attacks of pests.
The timely pruning of the shoots will also help, since the thickening of the landings only attracts pests. Bushes should be well lit and blown by air. And with the arrival of autumn, do not forget to remove all fallen leaves from under the bushes.
Agrotechnical receptions
In practice, it has been repeatedly proven that digging the soil around the bush is the most effective method of dealing with gooseberries. Despite the fact that this is quite a laborious process, hilling each bush with 10-15 cm of soil at its base will save the fruits from the appearance of butterflies. They simply cannot overcome such a layer of earth to get to the surface. However, one should not forget that it is better to take the soil from between the rows and from a depth of at least 5 cm, where there are definitely no pupae. Ground under the bushes can spud compost or peat (layer up to 8-10 cm). After the end of the flowering period, such mulch should be removed.
An effective remedy is also the cultivation of the soil with a 12% solution of dust, and 10 days before opening the buds, 50 g of dust powder is poured under the bush itself.
Drug treatment
No matter how hard you try to prevent the appearance of the gooseberry moth or get rid of it with the help of agricultural methods alone, the most effective control measures are based on the use of special preparations.
For example, Actellic, Etafos and Karbofos are well suited from chemical agents to combat ophilidae. Spraying of these compounds is carried out immediately after flowering plants.
In addition, if this year the gooseberries and currants were massively affected by the fire moth, then next year the treatment with these means should be carried out before the start of flowering.
Important! Spraying the bushes with the indicated preparations will not only protect the plants from the fire, but also act as a preventive measure against anthracnose.
Folk remedies
After waiting for the gooseberry flowers to fully bloom (about 5 days from the beginning of flowering), the bushes are treated with an infusion of pharmacy chamomile, for which 100 g of dried flowers of the plant are pre-filled with 10 liters of hot water.
Alternatively, you can also use a mixture of pyrethrum powder and road dust (in a 1: 2 ratio) for pollination of bushes. Sieve the dust thoroughly before mixing. After 5-6 days after the first pollination, the procedure should be repeated again.
If you don’t know how to deal with ophilia, because the pest has firmly settled on the gooseberry and currant bushes, try again on the elderberry branch on the advice of I. Michurin. To prepare a solution for the treatment of plants, 10 g of elderberry powder must be infused in 1 liter of water for 48 hours, then filtered. 
Before direct processing, 150-200 ml of the concentrate should be diluted in 800-850 ml of water, and only then used. The processing procedure should be carried out in the evening, when butterflies are most active and massively fly over the bushes.
In most cases, the recommendations described help to completely get rid of the pest, but if next year you again notice signs of vital activity of the gooseberry moth on your plot, simply repeat all the above procedures again.
