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The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul. ~ Alfred Austin

Thursday 10 September 2015

Fruit trees and fruit fly










I thought more for my record than anything I would write a list of what fruit trees we have in growing.

*Mulberry x2 (black & white)
*Pomegranate x2
*Kaffir Lime
*Lemon (Lots of Lemons)
*Mandarin (Emperor)
*Orange (Washington Navel)
*Blueberry x2
*Apricot (Bulida)
*Cherry (Stella)
*Plums (Santa Rosa & Mariposa)
*Mango (Grown from seed)
*Almond (Self pollinating)
*Loquat
*Nectarine x3
*Apple (Granny Smith & Lady Williams)
*Quince
*Grapevine
*Angel Peach (Donut)
*Crab Apple
*Passionfruit which needs to be pulled out as it's just the rootstock and start again.


The donut peach has quite a few fuzzy little peaches growing at the moment. This tree has never really done much good, the peaches have generally been pretty tasteless and I had thought about pulling it out last year but never got around to it. It produced peaches and when I went to pick them discovered to my horror that it had fruit fly. In this garden and all previous gardens I have been very very lucky and never had to contend with fruit fly, so was annoyed that they had finally found one of my trees. So once again I decided to pull this tree out and replace with another fruit tree and once again it didn't happen and now we have fuzzy little peaches growing. Which got me thinking I had better hurry up and do something bait wise to hopefully prevent the fruit fly from getting into the peaches.



Last Saturday night on Gardening Australia Jerry Coleby-Williams was talking to an entomologist all about fruit flies. At the end of the segment he showed how he makes traps that are cheap and easy to make at home, so I have just made a couple and stuck in the tree. It will be interesting to see how they work. It was so easy just half a teaspoon of Vegemite, a drop of dish washing detergent and some water, and replace once a week. I have my fingers crossed it was a once off and I won't have any more trouble with fruit fly, but I think that is probably wishful thinking!

Has anyone tried these baits or similar and do they work? Has anyone else found the donut peach tasteless and if so what organic methods can you recommend to help improve flavour?

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