Tales from the allotment shed" fly's

Evening all,
Well it's getting nearer every day to the start of the sowing /growing & planting,

Now's the time to continue "all you new to gardening people" to give some thought ref what can go wrong? whats the thief in my garden??

Well before you start looking round at the other allotment holders and thinking your mum said "look for the ones with shifty eye's" NO NO NO,

The ones im talking about are two fold, those lovely creatures that sing away to you "until your backs turned & your fruit and veg is just ripe enough to be picked or harvested " and then they strike and on your return the fruits all gone and the veg ie carrots/onions are waiting for you to dig up and again insects/ the carrot fly or onion fly have struck!

It's really the pits to any gardener young or old to have this happen, "but what can you do about it"??????????????

Well as ive said ref the mole problem & weed problem "know your enemy"
and how they work,
Lets look at the fly first.

CARROT FLY.
Now these are attracted to your carrots by the smell of the carrot,
it's when this smell is scented by the fly that this fly lays its eggs in the soil near the carrot and when these eggs hatch the worms enjoy more carrot than you will "they leave holes through out the carrot"

Whats the answer to this problem? It's two fold, first this fly can only fly up to 16inch in height so if you can have your carrot bed so its protected via netting to this height? your in with a chance,

(2) the second thought is ref what attracted the carrot fly in the first place " smell of the carrots"
so by planting "ONION's" next to the carrots the smell of the onion will de-tract the carrot fly and the onion fly wont smell the onions so you can see why this method is used. (one smell stops one fly and the other smell stops the other fly)

The next problem of theft is via the birds, they'll eat both veg & fruit,
Myself i found the fruit bush no matter what fruit was the prime target

Whats the answer to the bird problem?

Well ive seen all sorts tried and most just didnt work, C.D's spinning around on sticks, waste of time, scare mother-law type crows! didnt work
(infact i had an old jacket pinched off the one i made and i dont think it would have fitted any local birds

Again netting is a good solution to this problem,
Some folk have old nett curtains dangling over the currant bush and as these are low enough you can get away with this method ,

But what about the high stuff such as miniture tree's plum/apple/cherry etc etc??

After a few years of this trying to fight the birds for some of my own fruit and salad/veg from them i invested in a fruit cage with netting.

Now these fruit cages work out tobe real value for money they dont always need to be concreted into the ground, infact the one i had just pushed into the earth and it stayed there for some 6 years no matter the weather, "but" you can dismantle them for winter storage if you like.

Netting,
the modern netting of todays cages come in all sizes ie the size of the holes in the fabric, and they are all designed to let air and water through so you have no need to worry about rain not getting to the plants /trees/bushes or veg,
The like's of peach suffer from rain on the skins it leaves marks but under netting ive found this problem tobe much less of a problem,

carrot/onion fly can't get through the netting so again its another problem sorted, and all in one solution.

Once again this method like any other start up method will cost money, but as ive said these cages are not costly but will save you both a head ache ref lost crops/fruit etc and you wont be gardening to feed the birds And these cages and netting dont need much doing to them as they're made to last.

Tip.
If you do decide to buy such a cage, keep hold of all the plastic used milk bottles you can, these act as a very good corner stake support to stop the netting poking through and cost you nothing.

If you want to know more about these cages get hold of gardeners world and you'll see company after company selling them.

Remember do it right once and pay only once, get it wrong once and you'll pay twice.
Good gardening to you all.