g'day john,
hope you are well?
a lot in your psot but that is how it is with those of us attempting
to find ways of managing female fruit flies. i ave the understanding
the female hatches when conditions are humid enough and warm enough,
our star fruit indicaes that we are trapping male flies in low numbers
of course it is not season yet but have had no female damaged fruit.
naturelure is the one that contains spinosid or whatever it is called
no good for bees, and as i understand it those who use it, it needs to
be sprayed around the plant but not on the fruit, some fix yellow
buckets to the fence and spray it in there as well, have not heard of
huge success with it and it is expensive, and again as far as i know
doesn't work as in a trap scenerio.
i have had many chats with those using the product and they concur
that it won't work in a trap dack pot situation. asfor attracting
females into teh male trap and holding them mmm dunno? the attractant
in the male trap is a female pheromone mock so unless the animal
kingdom has become liberted then it doesn't attract females,and the
male trap as i see it needs to be somewhat open to allow the aroma to
float in the breeze which it does extremely well.
yes colours are often used i tried some sticky boards which caught a
small number of female fruit fly but trapped lots of other flying bugs
which are harmless in the garden and could be beneficial, also the
ones we bought online were made of cardboard so the action of the wind
caused them to tear and then the rain did as well, but all in all they
where of no success as we still lost nearly all our fruit. we tried
with blue and yellow tape around the bottles near the entrances with
no result obviously the coloured boards worked but not that well with
f/f.
so right! db's expert says about the protein he should know hey? that
is probably the crux of my issue the flies are not hatchng in my
garden, they are hatching in some other garden where the gardener has
very poor husbandry. so by the time the fly gets here she has fed and
is primed to mate or already mated, that make sense. what he calls
protein i dunno but guess it is derived from flowers of plants, always
flowers somewhere always in our garden. wdon't see hordes of females
just one or 2 hear and there.
maybe i'm looking in the wrong area but how often can a female mate
and lay eggs is this a one up affair or does she persist all season?
seems that way as the male fly population would have to be low to say
teh least.
in the past those recipes we have featured have worked so much so we
at least got 50% or thereabouts of our crop without the effort of
netting. that may be because then our next door friendly neighbour had
guava's that he allowed us to pick all immature fruit from and destroy
it, but unfriendly one had mango trees where all fruit eventually
ended upon the ground if the fruit bats didn't eat it, so guess then
on what d.b's expert said the female came right to our garden for
protein and fell fould of the traps.
so no aswers or help there for us and others like us as we have no
idea which gardener is infesting the area with the fly? we have been
here 5 years and up until 3 years ago our trap the male program was
delivering acceptable resuls then it all went haywire like someone had
planted a guava that came into fruit and became the population point
for the fly, my understanding that could be up to 4k away as the crow
flies.
so the nets will be out soon now as the tom plants are growing great
guns already needing tying. we got good fruit of the star fruit
because miraculously it fruited over autumn/winter and is still going
hope that keeps going as we then don't need to find a net for that
tree. or pick and dump all fruit when green.
sadly no we don't have our earth friendly throne, will set up a
humanure bucket if and when i can even if only for my persoannal use
modern mcmansions don't lend themselves to the versatility to allow
those who live in them much leeway for being responsible for ones own
waste. westill recycle much other rottable stuff into or growing
areas, keeps the land fill bin low in content. still promote that
responsibility though. we use nearly all water at least twice.
anyhow good chat if you learn something about these dreaded females
let us know i will pass i around where i hang out.
On Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:45:25 +0000 (UTC), John Savage
wrote:
snipped
--
Matthew 25:13 KJV
"Watch therefore, for ye know neither
the day nor the hour wherein the Son
of man cometh"
Mark 13:33 "Take ye heed, watch and pray:
for ye know not when the time is".
len
With peace and brightest of blessings,
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."
http://www.lensgarden.com.au/