Protect your home garden from fruit fly

Follow these steps to protect your home-grown fruit and vegetables at risk from fruit fly.

Pick

Promptly pick your ripe fruit and vegetables.

Do not move or share fruit and vegetables from your property.

Prune fruit trees so you can pick them more easily next season.

Check

Learn how to identify fruit fly by checking your fruit and vegetables for maggots and blemishes.

Collect

Cleaning up fallen fruit from your garden helps break the fruit fly life cycle. It prevents potential fruit fly maggots from burying into the soil and developing into adult flies.

Do not compost.

If you are in the Riverland, put unwanted fruit and vegetables in 2 sealed plastic bags and into a general waste bin.

If you are in the Adelaide metro area, you don’t need to bag it, just put it in a green waste bin.

If you are in an outbreak area and don't have a green bin, check the advice on disposing of fruit and vegetables.

Call

If you suspect fruit fly, seal the fruit in an airtight container and call the Fruit Fly Hotline: 1300 666 010.

Composting

If you are in a red outbreak area or a yellow suspension area, you must not compost any restricted fruit or vegetables.

Composting these items in outbreak zones can allow fruit fly to breed and survive, even in cooler months.

Instead, place any restricted fruit or vegetables in your

• green organics bin (if in a metropolitan Adelaide outbreak area) or
• red waste bin, in line with your local council’s fruit fly disposal guidelines (if in the Riverland or Ceduna outbreaks areas).