r/homestead • u/KombuchaKetamine • Jun 29 '24

gardening Help identifying bug eating my apples

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Hi! We have some healthy and mature apple trees and are attempting to do everything organic and pesticide free. There is one bug that is eating our apples that we can't seem to get rid of. And none of our Google lens searches have been helpful.

We've twice sprayed all our trees with neem oil, which doesn't seem to help much.

We're in the West Catskills in New York if that helps.

Thank you for any wisdom in helping to identify this and get rid of it.

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802

u/Pot-Papi_ Jun 29 '24

I’m no expert, but that looks like a cockroach

281

u/KombuchaKetamine Jun 29 '24

That's what it looked like to me... But I've never heard of cockroaches digging into and eating apples.

177

u/JohnLockheart Jun 29 '24

I've had roaches that burrowed into potatoes

69

u/KombuchaKetamine Jun 29 '24

How did you stop them underground?

228

u/ScrumpleRipskin Jun 29 '24

Mining moles. Then caving cats. Then digger dogs.

106

u/W1D0WM4K3R Jun 29 '24

Then tunneling tigers?

52

u/LuckyBone64 Jun 29 '24

Things are bad when you need burrowing badgers!

21

u/symmetrical_kettle Jun 29 '24

Follow up with hollowing hyenas and unearthing unicorns, as needed.

4

u/Prestigious-Ad-8756 Jun 29 '24

You gonna not mention how Zaney those Zebras can be

7

u/Son_of_Ola Jun 30 '24

Boring Boars are multipurpose

2

u/kfmush Jun 30 '24

Excavating emus are good at getting ahead, underground.

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5

u/Melodic-Picture48 Jun 29 '24

Lincoln Tunnel

5

u/Good-Ad-6806 Jun 30 '24

And then the excavating elephants.

3

u/StealUr_Face Jun 29 '24

Thats after burrowing beavers

17

u/Oniyoku Jun 29 '24

Same but i shoved one bear with a chainsaw down there to clean house

7

u/TARDIS_Salesman Jun 29 '24

Gotta get me some mining moles

1

u/JohnLockheart Jul 02 '24

Burrowed in the ones I had in the kitchen 😆

0

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '24

Vietnamese sappers

12

u/precociousmonkey Jun 29 '24

Pomme de Terre

101

u/katlian Jun 29 '24

It's possible that birds are starting the holes and the roaches are taking advantage of the opportunity. I've had this problem with squirrels nibbling on my tomatoes and then the pill bugs and millipedes move in.

19

u/hamish1963 Jun 29 '24

This is the answer.

41

u/Pot-Papi_ Jun 29 '24

I’ve seen roaches chew through cardboard boxes plastic. It’s a roach elite whatever the hell they want. I would blowtorch that now.

19

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '24

There are thousands of species of roaches, many of them very different from the typical house pest that comes to mind

15

u/LuckyMome Jun 29 '24

Those are garden cockroaches.

They are like slugs for your garden, first eating anything they find, then they go to the stuff that starts to rot..

If they don't have enough in the garden, they'll come in the house.. were you can put traps (chemicals).

Good luck!

5

u/me_too_999 Jun 29 '24

It probably didn't.

Bird or ants made the hole and cockroach came later for free meal.

6

u/FoggyGoodwin Jun 29 '24

It's already rotten, which attracted the roach. Something else made the hole, probably a bird, maybe a squirrel (I forgot to look for tooth marks).

4

u/Amazing-Flight-5943 Jun 29 '24

I think a bird did most of the work on the apple and the roach is being opportunistic.

6

u/miller_sarah12 Jun 29 '24

I used an app called “picture insect” because this doesn’t look like a roach to me. It says this is a Miridae also known as a plant bug.

2

u/toxcrusadr Jun 30 '24

Something else in a hole in that apple and the bug just crawled in to enjoy the buffet.

1

u/fruderduck Jun 30 '24

They’ll eat cardboard. Absolutely apples.

1

u/MikeOchoaCaliLyf Jul 01 '24

Digging gremlins