Protect your home garden from fruit fly

Fruit fly targets a long list of fruit and fruiting vegetables. To protect your home-grown produce from fruit fly, it’s important to take steps to break the fruit fly life cycle.

Pick

Promptly pick your ripe fruit and vegetables

Reduce the opportunity for fruit fly to lay eggs by picking fruit and vegetables as soon as they are ripe and bringing them indoors. You can pick some varieties early to ripen inside. Always remove any leftover fruit at the end of the season. Prune fruit trees to a manageable height so you can reach fruit at the top of the tree.

Picked too much fruit? Downsize your tree to grow only what you need or look at dwarf varieties. You could also reduce or replace fruit fly ‘host’ plants with ‘non-host’ plants and non-fruiting ornamentals.

If you net your trees, the ideal mesh size to prevent fruit fly is less than 1.6mm measured diagonally.

Remember: You cannot move, sell or share fresh, restricted fruit from properties in a red outbreak area. You must cook, bake, freeze, puree, grate or dehydrate it first.

Collect

Collect fallen fruit from the ground

It’s essential to collect fallen fruit from your garden immediately. It prevents fruit fly maggots from burying into the soil and developing into adult flies.

Check

Check fruit for blemishes and maggots

Learn how to identify fruit fly, then check your fruit and vegetables for maggots and blemishes.

Call

Call the Fruit Fly Hotline

If you suspect fruit fly, seal the fruit in a plastic bag or an airtight container and call the Fruit Fly Hotline: 1300 666 010. They’ll help you determine if it’s a fruit fly, or a different insect, and next steps.

Composting during an outbreak

If you are in a red outbreak area or a yellow suspension area, you must not compost any restricted fruit or vegetables because it encourages fuit fly to breed.

In the Riverland, put unwanted fruit and vegetables in 2 sealed plastic bags and into a general waste (red) bin. In the Adelaide metro area, you don’t need to bag it, just put it in a green waste bin.

Feeding chickens and other animals

Like with composting, you must not leave fruit on the ground in a red outbreak or yellow suspension area, even if it’s to feed your chickens Maggots in fruit can easily burrow into the soil to develop into adult flies, while extra fruit provides an opportunity for fruit fly to lay eggs.  It’s fine to feed animals with fruit and vegetable that are not at risk of fruit fly.

Keep the rest of your garden tidy

Fruit fly lives in fruiting and non-fruiting trees and bushes. Keep these trimmed and tidy and cut back long grasses to reduce their habitat options.