A: Sounds like you’re being visited by bagworms. Bagworms kick off their season around Memorial Day weekend each year, and can damage a wide variety of plants. Watch out for damage on cypress, juniper, Indian hawthorn, and roses primarily, and do go out and have a look right now. It doesn’t take long for these pests to deal serious damage to all of these plants!
Bagworms can be deceptively hard to see, as they glue pieces of the host plant’s foliage to a silk bag they spin around themselves, moving around, bag and all, while they devour the plant you care about. It’s excellent camouflage! Once these pieces dry out and start to brown, the pests become much more apparent, but by then they’ve been stuffing themselves on your plants for quite some time.
For best control, you must spray while these pests are still feeding. Once they tie off and begin to pupate, chemical controls are iffy at best, as the silk bag they hang in, covered with bits of dead leaves, shelter the pests from direct contact with your sprays. Some of our best controls for these pests are organic pesticides, such as Natural Guard Spinosad spray – low toxicity to people and pets, but effective against these critters.