I had army worms in my oaks and apple trees til I got out the Sevin.

Leaves on my northern red and shumard got partially eaten by something this spring. What's odd is my pin oaks have zero damage.

I did see a LOT of the white "tents" from the Eastern Tent Caterpillar this spring around my town, but here there wasn't any notable defoliation except on some Prunus and Acer negundo, but they're fully re-leafed now.

Fall Canker Worms

There's been alot of tent catepillars this yr. When there's alot, some migrate off their usual black cherries onto other species, including oaks. When I was a kid there were rare tent-catepillar "plagues" w/armies of them crawling on the streets & sidewalks.

That said, there's quite a few oak predator insects, so hard to say. Don't think it's Gypsy moths, tho -- not here at least.

The gypsy moths seem to have become much less of a problem in general due to the fungal disease that now keeps their numbers in check.

Nothing like the devastation of the '80s - early '00s.

I still think most of the dead snags of large trees you see in parts of PA are due to the gypsy moths. Although things are starting to fill in nicely in those areas now.

The "benefit" was that a lot of the understory was able to fill in, although anecdotally I've heard a lot of the oaks in PA that perished are being replaced by red and sugar maple instead of oak.

This is the first year in recent memory that the forest tent caterpillars didn't totally defoliate all the young oaks in my yard, forcing them to re-leaf.

Really I wanted to get that BT Baccillis Thur???? But I could'nt find any locally. The Seven kills alot of different bugs, likely good guys as well as bad. The Bt is worm specific, hopefully not earthworms, but ... the least evil, you know.