"cookie" wrote in message
oups.com...
I love my own fruit&vegie products from my garden, but I had to put
more than half of my juicy nectarines into the garbage bag last year.
Can anybody give me an organic method of dealing with fruit fly please?


Fruitfly are a pain. I have been trying to stop them for years. I make up a
mix of 500ml water, 1 cup sugar or honey, 2 tsp bakers yeast and 2 tblsp
powdered ginger (basically a ginger beer plant). I put the contents into
plastic bottles and hang it on the tree. I drill several holes in the side
with a 4mm drill. The contents ferment and catches fruitfly as well as
vinegar flys. It has to be emptied of deadies and also topped up due to
evaporation. This limits some of the fruitfly but I still lose fruit to
them.

Any fallen fruit should be removed from the ground and destroyed. The
maggots will eat away merrily and when they have reached their time leave
the fruit and burrow in the ground. There they form a chrystallis (not sure
if that's the word) it looks like a hard reddish brown shell smaller than a
tictac but the same shape. They will break out and be a fruitfly then. Where
upon they fly up to the tree and start the cycle again.

The cycle will be 5 days in hot weather, that is from maggot to adult.
Unhatched fruitfly during winter will hatch when it 24C in spring. So most
fruitfly is hibernating in the soil under your fruit tree.

An interesting observation was when I had chooks scratching around under a
fig tree I had no fruitfly or very little. When the chooks were gone the
tree was lousy with them. So chooks could be an option or maybe rake to soil
often under the tree. I could find no information to say how deep they
burrow.

Not sure if a thick mulch under a tree would stop them. Could keep the soil
cooler so maybe slow down the breeding cycle.

Wondering if traps at ground level would help also.

Some things to ponder I guess. Good luck with the blighters.

Rick