Citrus Leaf Miners

Annoying little critters aren’t they?  You can see their telltale trails on the leaves below:

Although I don’t tend to get other leaf miners, my citrus are frequently attacked by citrus leaf miners.  The general consensus seems to be that they are relatively harmless and that they shouldn’t really inhibit cropping, and/or growth unless your plants are really young.  Whilst I think that’s probably true my plants are fairly young so I would quite like to keep them at bay a bit more than I have managed to date.  Equally while I don’t mind them disfiguring the citrus I grow for fruit I do like my Kaffir Lime leaves to be bug free.

I decided to try an oil based approach to keeping them at bay.  I mixed together equal parts sunflower oil, washing up liquid and water and then sprayed it onto the leaves.  The plan is to respray fortnightly and monitor results.  I will be interesting to see if it works.  One thing I have noticed though is that spraying it on may have damaged the very juvenile leaves on my cumquat which is somewhat annoying, especially as the leaf miners aren’t particularly active at the moment.  Of course it may be the cool weather which harmed the leaves but I’m not too sure.  Anyone had issues using a similar concoction on their citrus leaves?