The eagerly awaited fruiting season of your cherry tree is almost upon us and then this: bruised spots, rotting, half-ripe cherries and maggots in the pulp! This unpleasant annoyance is mostly caused by the cherry fruit fly or the cherry vinegar fly, which is introduced from Asia.
How do I get the maggots out of my cherries?
Maggots in cherries are caused primarily by the cherry fruit fly and the cherry vinegar fly. To combat them, you can hang yellow panels, use crop protection nets, cover the ground, harvest and glean completely, or use vinegar traps.
Flies specialized in cherries
Cherries are not only popular with us humans. The red, sweet fruits are also valued in the animal world, for example by birds, raccoons and the larvae of certain flies. Species that more or less specialize in cherries when laying eggs are:
- the cherry fruit fly and
- the cherry vinegar fly
Cherry fruit fly
The cherry fruit fly actually allows its brood to grow exclusively in cherries, such as sour cherries, honeysuckle cherries or bird cherries. She lays her eggs on the cherries shortly before the fruit ripens, where the small, whitish larvae hatch after 5-12 days and eat themselves thick and round within about a month. The fruit begins to rot due to the food and falls off. The maggots pupate in the ground and emerge as ready-made flies next May.
Cherry vinegar fly
This fly, which is particularly problematic for fruit growers, originally comes from Asia and has only been present in Germany since around 2011. It not only affects cherries, but also other soft fruits. Over the warm season, cherry vinegar flies can produce several generations. In contrast to cherry fruit flies, cherry vinegar flies overwinter as adults.
Countermeasures
In order to get rid of cherry fruit flies and cherry vinegar flies, a number of preventative measures are recommended. It's best to combine individual methods, because of course none of them has a 100% success rate.
Hang up yellow plaques
Yellow tablets coated with glue and sometimes containing attractants attract the flies and allow them to stick to them. Hanging such plaques in the tree only serves to make the extent of any infestation visible.
Culture protection networks
Covering cherry trees with cultural protection nets (€13.00 on Amazon) is also a proven and very reliable way in agriculture to prevent flies from laying eggs. The fine mesh of these nets cannot penetrate the fertilized females and therefore cannot lay eggs on the fruits.
Floor fleece
From May until the end of the harvest season, you should cover the ground under the tree with a protective fleece. This effectively prevents the cherry fruit flies from hatching and laying new eggs.
Harvest and glean completely
By harvesting all the fruits and picking up all the fallen cherries from the ground, you can significantly curb the proliferation. Important: Do not compost spoiled fruits, but bury them deep in the ground or dispose of them in organic waste, otherwise nothing can be done to stop them from multiplying!
Especially for cherry vinegar flies: vinegar traps
The best way to decimate cherry vinegar flies, which are difficult to control, is to use homemade vinegar traps: Simply fill perforated cans or plastic bottles with one part water, one part vinegar and a splash of dish soap and hang them in the tree.