Carrot fly!
I was reading my April issue of Kitchen Garden magazine and they suggest strategies for minimising the attacks from these beasties......
They suggest that we time our sowing, weeding and harvesting to coincide with the lowest levels of carrot fly egg laying and gave this helpful link to the Carrot fly forecast that will be made this year
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/whri/hdcpestbulletin
So I will definitely be checking in there when the forecasting starts in April.....
posted by lilymarlene @ 10:56 am
7 comments
7 Comments:
ohhhh I hate those little flies!!!!! Great link.
I'm going to try sowing a batch of carrots in a tall-ish container to see if keeping them 18 ins or so off the ground helps. They're supposed to only fly at ground level. We'll see...
Basically Carrot fly are stupid! As they only fly very low it is possible to provide barriers around your carrots, raise them up or use companion plants to disguise the smell (most of the onion family planted alongside the carrots work well for this).
Hope this helps!
http://ryans-garden.blogspot.com/
Crikey! That article is a bit wordy, I'm not sure I totally understood it? I have grown my carrots inbetween the onions, surrounded by garlic, but the best is to use enviro fleecy stuff!
I'm trying the tall container idea too and if it fails I am giving up on carrots no matter how many free packets of seed I acquire from magazines!
I read that you can sow a row of chive or onion seed next to your carrots and the smell is supposed to deter the flies too!
We interplant carrots with onions, shallots and chives, we rotate the beds, and we put fleece barriers up, but the carrot flies still get in.
Our over-wintered carrots were hit much harder this year than in any previous year so about two-thirds of them are going to the pigs (not that they mind).
We'll still have enough carrots to eat, though, as I pickle baby ones and freeze diced, blanched carrots throughout September.
It's still annoying to lose so many fresh ones, though.
Oh, and if anyone tells you that rotation works, tell them to do their research. I did and found that carrot fly travel around 1,000 metres to get to carrots. How many of us have that much room to play with when planning our rotations?
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