Fighting The Cherry Fly

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

The cherry fly attacking cherries and cherries is found literally everywhere. Depressions appear on the affected fruits, they quickly lose their luster, the softened flesh rots. Fruits of middle and late ripening varieties of cherries and sweet cherries are most affected. Rotten and wormy cherries and cherries are the result of the destructive activity of the cherry fly. In order to avoid the loss of a substantial part of the crop, it is necessary to fight this pest

Meet the pest

Cherry fly has a dark brown, close to black, color with light orange thin legs, legs, pronounced chest plate and head. Her hips are black, her eyes are green, and on her back you can see a couple of longitudinal yellow stripes. There are also four transverse brownish stripes on the transparent wings. The length of males is about 2, 9 - 4 mm, females - 4 - 5, 3 mm.

The oblong eggs of cherry flies are about 0.7 mm in size. Eggs are yellow-white in color, pointed at one tip, and slightly dull at the other. Legless larvae are white with a slight yellowish tinge, 6 - 7 mm in length, taper towards the head end. Their posterior end is equipped with a pair of spiracles in the form of protruding tubules, and the anterior end is equipped with two chitinized hooks of a rather peculiar oropharyngeal apparatus. White pupae reach a length of 3 - 4 mm, and the size of barrel-shaped false cocoons is 3, 5 - 4, 5 mm.

Wintering of pupae takes place in the ground in false cocoons, at a depth of 3 to 5 cm. Females flying out in spring with underdeveloped sexual products additionally feed on aphids, numerous sugary secretions of harmful leaf fleas, as well as droplets of juice protruding from damaged fruits, leaves and from the cracks of the trunks … Mating begins two to three days after they emerge, and egg-laying begins another 7 to 13 days. The eggs are laid by the females one at a time under the skin of the ripening cherry and cherry fruits. Their total fertility is from 70 to 150 eggs.

The larvae revive somewhere in 7 - 10 days after oviposition and feed for 15 - 25 days on the juicy pulp of the fruit, located around the seeds. Having left the fruits at the end of feeding, the larvae that have fallen to the ground form puparia, going deeper into the surface layer of the soil. After 5 - 6 days, they already turn into pupae, and in this form they remain until the next spring. Only one generation of pests manages to develop per year.

How to fight

A certain proportion of cherry flies die from bacterial, viral and various fungal diseases, especially in the spring and autumn periods in years with heavy rainfall. Helps in reducing the population of the enemy cherries and a number of endoparasites - as a rule, a significant part of them are representatives of the tahin family of flies.

When setting up a garden, early ripe varieties of cherries and sweet cherries will be most preferable - they are less susceptible to attacks by cherry flies. In spring and autumn, it is necessary to cultivate the soil in the near-trunk circles, as well as in the aisles - this simple procedure also helps to reduce the number of parasites.

If more than two percent of last year's harvest is damaged by cherry flies, the next year, 10-12 days after their departure, the trees are sprayed with insecticides at least twice. Determine the mass emergence of pests by flowering acacia. It is very important during this period to spray the soil from which the cherry flies emerge. As a rule, insecticides such as Aktara, Karate, Lightning, Iskra and others help to achieve a good effect. In order to avoid addiction of cherry flies to the products, it is recommended to alternate them when re-spraying.

Some gardeners hang yellow glue traps on trees. Such traps can be made with your own hands: by gluing bright yellow paper to cardboard, ALT glue, used against mice and in trapping belts, is applied to it. A sign of the mass emergence of parasites is the presence of more than twenty individuals on such traps.

You can also use this method: pour any sweet liquid (beer, honey water, compote or kvass) into jars or cut plastic bottles and hang the containers on trees, four pieces per tree. When the liquid ferments, insects will begin to flock onto it.

It is also very important to kill cherry aphids, as the sweet secretions of cherry aphids are delicious food for cherry flies. You can plant plants that frighten her away under trees: marigolds, marigolds. And you can spray from aphids with decoctions of tobacco leaves, laundry soap or wormwood.

And, of course, the complete collection of cherry and sweet cherry fruits should be carried out as quickly as possible, after harvesting, after harvesting, all the carrion under the trees, which must either be removed from the garden altogether, or bury in the soil half a meter.