The fruit fly in Western Australia
is an enormous problem for commercial
fruit producers
and is also a menace
to the backyard fruit growers.
It renders fruit inedible and it's been with us
since 1895. Mediterranean fruit fly
is about the size of a housefly its brown in colour has got patterned wings
quite an attractive fly but a devastating menace.
One of the things we would like to
get people involved with is the use of a
calendar at home, to actually mark when there fruit is
about to be harvested and even before that when the fruit is half formed
and with these stages of fruit development
you can time your activities.
Having a fruit tree is a little bit like
having a pet and of course you must clean up after it
pick up falling fruit and put it into a
black plastic bag seal up the bag and then leave it in the sun
for a week and they will kill off any eggs or larvae
maggots there are in the fruit.
Organic foliar fruit fly baits
are available and I've got one here
and we just going to measure the solution
putting it into the water
so this contains molasses and
a natural insecticide to kill off the fruit fly.
It's always important to read the label.
It will give you specific ways in which you can mix and
apply the fruit fly foliar bait.
Were just using a
simple home type pressure sprayer,
pump up type.
Just going to give this a few pumps.
[pump, pump, pump]
and what we want
to do when we apply the foliar bait
is to have it coming out as the course steam
so we putting a food source onto the leaves,
that's going to attract the fruit fly and kill them.
Baiting should be done at least
once a week and preferably twice a week in the warmer months.
Fruit fly trapping is an effective way of reducing
the fruit fly population in your backyard
and reducing the damage to your fruit.
You can either buy a commercial trap
or you can make your own from a cool drink bottle.
Starting with the later of water
to which we heading 50 mil
of cloudy ammonia, which you can buy the supermarket
adding to that
a tablespoon
of sugar
5 mil of vanilla essence
tablespoon of the yeast extract
and then mix it in.
[water sloshing]
So you want to fill this just to below
the holes that you've put in with your soldering iron
and it's ready to go.
Once you put your trap in place
keep an eye on the solution and we recommend
changing the lure every week.
And another way to prevent fruit fly damage
is to prevent access of the fruit fly to your fruit.
You can do this by either using netting or you can
buy commercially available bags.
Paper bags or cloth bags or mesh bags are all available.
Following all those control practices
will enable you to enjoy your homegrown fruit.