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Fanie

Quote - They could be used to keep tomato blight and fruit fly at bay. That is enough to blow my mind. End quote.

If you mind hasn't been blown (up or away :-o) I would like to know more about the fruit fly part...

Thank you
fanie at faze dot co dot za

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Jun 03, 2021
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fruit fly and mushrooms
by: Caroline

Hi Fanie

Thank you for your interest. I read the article I wrote on growing mushrooms, on which you made your comment, and couldn't find the quote on fruit fly, so I'm assuming the quote is from one of my other articles and I got this information from reading Paul Stammet. I've learned to take him with a pinch of salt. But it may be my own fault that I cannot do what he does, of course.

Growing mushrooms in the garden is actually pretty tricky I find. After many failed experiments with straw bales, garden compost, and mainly using oyster mushrooms, but also some others, I stopped trying.

But without trying we grew lots of edible Amanita in our garden. They came in when we brought in horse manure by the truckload for our worm business. They thrived till the worms had completely spent the horse manure (that took about four years) and then they disappeared again. Gardening is a long learning journey, and promises of easy anything I've become wary off. When we had a lot of mushrooms under the guava tree, it did not reduce the fruit fly problem.

In the life cycle of the fruit fly, the maggots or larvae crawl out of the fallen fruit into the ground, and then spend a period in the ground pupating, and hatch from there as flies. I do know that chickens can scratch them up and eat them, reducing but not eliminating the problem. That may be one natural way of dealing with the problem. But if your neighbour has fruit fly, they can just zoom over and lay eggs in your fruit.

You were right to point out this piece of information because I cannot remember the connection of fungus to fruit fly anymore. Its possible that the mycelium invades the pupa of the fruit fly in the ground.

Fruit fly are such a problem for me too. I just ferment my guava fruit and make them into vinegar, fruit fly and all. The vinegar is great. I've got good cucumbers by covering them all with a muslin sock when they were tiny.

But, when we had mushrooms (or residues of horse manure ?) I must say we didn't have so many diseases and our garden was extremely fertile.

Sorry to disappoint you.

kind greetings
Caroline

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