In the summer, having looked more attentively to the currant leaves, you can see red and brown spots, swellings on their lower side. At the beginning gardener at once there is a question: why at red and at a black currant blush leaves? And it happens because a leafy gallic aphid settled on a bush - a known pest of a garden. Its rapid spread is promoted by warm winter and hot, dry summer.
Winter black oblong eggs of aphids on the branches of the currant. In spring, with the beginning of bud blossoming, the pest's larvae emerge from the eggs and, moving to the lower part of the young leaf, suck the juice out of it. After this, red, burgundy patches and blisters appear on the currant leaves. These thickenings are blown outward and visible from afar. And the sheet itself becomes twisted and ugly.
In early summer, the growth of shoots is suspended, young currant leaves coarsen and are no longer so attractive to aphids. When the female aphids become winged, they fly over to other plants in the garden. On them, insects live until the end of summer, they breed and give rise to colonies of aphids. And then again fly to the currant and lay eggs on it, so that in the spring they begin to destroy the bush again.
Methods of fighting aphids in the currant
If you notice the aphids on the currant before ripening berries, it is better not to use chemical preparations for pest control. Use decoctions and infusions of herbal remedies: chamomile medicinal, yarrow, tobacco or makhorka, garlic and others. For better adhesion of infusions to the leaves, you must add 40 grams of household or tar soap to 10 liters of water. The prepared solution should be sprayed over the currant bushes. Pay more attention to the underside of the leaf and the young shoots, where the most pests are located.
For prevention, you can use sprinkling with nitrafen at a rate of 300 g per 10 liters of water in the spring before budding. This will help to destroy the hibernating eggs of aphids and prevent other diseases of the currant.
In addition to these methods, it is possible to fight aphids on the currant by cutting all the damaged red leaves and shoots on the red currant.
Other insects can also destroy the aphids: ladybugs, lacewings, twins, etc. To attract these useful predatory insects to your garden, sow nectariferous plants for them, and they will help you fight the aphids.
Anthracnose
In addition to the damage to aphids, the leaves turn red on the currant and due to the damage caused by anthracnose - fungal disease of plants. This disease causes a decrease in the growth of shoots on the bush, as well as a significant decrease in the yield and taste of berries. At the beginning of the disease, there are small red spots or plaque with glistening tubercles on the leaves of red or black currant. Then these spots merge and become brown, and the leaves on the bush dry and prematurely fall off. The disease extends even to the fruit.
Treatment of currants from redness of leaves
If you had red spots on the currant leaves in the garden in the previous season, then in the spring, before bud blossoming, you must sprinkle the bushes and soil under them with a solution of copper sulfate. Before the flowering begins and immediately after it, you can spray the currant bushes with a 1 % solution of the Bordeaux liquid . Repeated spraying can be carried out two weeks after harvesting.
In autumn it is better to destroy all the remains of plants and dig up the soil under the bushes. If the currant blushed leaves and the next year, then treatment of fungal diseases of currants should be repeated.