Banana Skipper / Banana Leaf Roller

After a disappearance of many years, the banana leaf roller (aka- banana skipper) is back. I happened to have spied an affected young tree on my way up the driveway. 

It's pretty noticeable. These two baby trees, shown above, had their leaves decimated . Closer inspection revealed a classic roll......

And inside that roll I found the caterpillar....

Checking the trees, I discovered 6 caterpillars. Of course, I destroyed them all. Next step, check all the other clumps of banana trees. Zero caterpillars. So happily only one clump had obvious banana leaf rollers at this time. But I will have to keep an eye out for the next couple of months. The trick to controlling this one is to destroy the caterpillars before they can turn into adults. 

This event reminded me of the value of spreading a crop around in different locations in the farm. That is, not growing all my bananas in one spot. To date I have 8 different areas for growing bananas. Thus if one clump gets infested with some sort of pest, all my bananas aren't necessarily infested. I found the banana rollers in only one clump.