'Tis the season for Christmas crafting, giving, family, peace, love and... fruit fly. I've never had a problem in my vegie gardens with these humble little bugs that are filling a niche in one of bio-diversity's hollow pockets...until now. I love how Green Harvest describe fruit fly as being responsible for more bad language from gardeners than any other pest, as a way of counting your blessings (if you are lucky enough to live in a fruit fly free zone) and a pest that can bring communities together.
With all the tomato and capsicum plants we put in this Spring, the abundance of apples on our tree and the anticipation and hope of homegrown, organic food we decided to prepare for the fruit fly onslaught that we heard so many stories of last Summer. We 're following all the basic fruit fly control methods such as planting cherry tomatoes instead of larger varieties (these are supposedly not as susceptible to attack), picking up fallen fruit, solarising instead of composting and baiting early (we love Wild May). With an apple tree that our chooks roost in, my girl loves to climb and that is fifteen feet tall, netting was not an option so we have reluctantly had to Eco-Naturalure as well.
Things were cruising along, zucchinis galore, salad lettuce, cucumbers and our first ripe tomatoes. There was much excitement in the vegie garden when the ripening tomatoes were discovered which was hotly pursued by that disheartening ache in my body that I had heard other gardeners describe last Summer. We were not the first ones to get to the first ripe tomatoes. The disheartening feeling was then followed by anger, a few choice words, a little bit of stomping, maybe some moping and then determination. I was not going to let the babies of this wee fly eat their way through our Summer harvest. And let me tell you there is nothing like a Mama on a mission. I consulted a permaculture guru friend, looked for exclusion products that would fit a tight Christmas budget and brainstormed. I concluded that the time it would take for some Green Harvest exclusion bags to arrive, with the Christmas loading on the postal service added on top, these little critters would get the upper hand. So in the forty five minute gap between swimming lessons and whatever else we had on I pulled out some calico, twine and my sewing machine and whipped up these rather crude homemade exclusion bags.
Necessity as they say is the mama of invention.
In the meantime we're working on some fly screen bags for the capsicums and enjoying some windowsill ripened tomato 'tasty-ness'.
~wishing you all some fruit fly free gardening goodness~
warmly C
