Onion fly - how not to be left without a crop

The onion fly is the closest relative of domestic and meat flies. It is slightly inferior to them in size, and it can be mistaken for a young individual of a different species, therefore we do not attach special importance to it and sometimes do not suspect that we are faced with a dangerous pest.

Only in the enlarged photo onion fly can you carefully see and find the differences.

Pest biology

We will find out what an onion fly is to understand how to deal with it. This is a two-winged insect from the family of flower flies. Her body is gray in length from five and a half to seven millimeters. Life cycle of a fly with complete transformation.

Reference! Insects with complete transformation pass successively the following stages of development: egg, larva, pupa, and imago.

Food

As it happens in many species of insects, the nutrition of adults and larvae is divided according to the object of food. If adult insects feed exclusively on the pollen of flowering plants, then their voracious children prefer bulbs of lily plants. Moreover, onions are most often affected, whose juicy scales are mainly eaten by larvae.

In addition to onion turnips, the pest onion fly can affect such daylilies:

• tulips;
• leek;
• garlic;
• chives;
• batun;
• and others.

Development

Wintered in the depths of the soil, up to 20 centimeters, the onion fly larvae with spring warming get out of their puparia and turn into adult insects. Biologists note that the flight of flies coincides with the flowering of dandelions, apple trees, cherries, elderberries or maples.

Reference! The puparium is a false cocoon of some species of flies in which an insect hibernates ready to fly.

At first, the flies gain strength by eating pollen, and then the female lays eggs on the soil next to the shoots of the bulbous plants, as well as on dry scales of the bulbs, feathers, or leaf sinuses. Each female is able to lay up to fifty eggs, and the duration of the spring summer can last up to one and a half months. So, it’s difficult to determine exactly when your plants can be infected by fly larvae.

The egg is incubated for 3-9 days depending on the ambient temperature, after which the hatched larvae penetrate the bulb. Moreover, their penetration paths are different:

• under the scales near the exit of the pen;
• through the bottom.

In any case, the larvae, having crept inside, begin to eat intensely, eating the bulb from the inside.

The onion fly larva stage lasts from ten to twenty days. During this time, an insect can destroy more than one plant, since, by eating one bulb, the larva will not fail to move to the nearest of the neighboring ones.

After this, pupation of the larva occurs, and it turns into a pupa. In this generation, the onion fly also lives 10-20 days, after which a new transformation into an adult insect occurs. The so-called July years of the onion fly begins.

Reference! In the southern regions, even 3-4 flies can be generated per season.

Signs of defeat

The fight against onion flies should begin immediately if the following signs of damage appear:

• the tips of the onion feathers first turn white, then turn yellow and dry;
• observed general inhibition of onion plants;
• there was an unpleasant putrefactive smell near the onion beds.

If you notice something like this, you need to pull out several plants and examine them carefully, the larva of the fly is easy to notice with the naked eye, because it is quite large - up to one centimeter in length, looks like an ordinary medium-sized maggot.

Prevention

It is always easier to prevent an attack than to fight it heroically. Therefore, prevention against onion flies will be the best protection for your garden lily crops. Consider all the preventive measures that are recommended for our sites today.

Useful activities

Do not be surprised at the name of this subtitle, later we will try to explain that there are some harmful tips on the Internet. Among the useful recommendations, first of all, we will name the crop rotation. This technique not only partially unmasks onion plantings for the pest, but does not allow diseases to accumulate in the soil. It is advisable to return bulbous plants to the same bed no earlier than three years later.
Second in priority, but not least, how to deal with the onion fly folk remedies, call the method of combined landings. Almost every gardener knows that carrots and onions have a beneficial effect on each other, each of the crops scares away the pest of its neighbor: onions carrot flyand carrots onion. In addition to carrots in this capacity with onions, you can plant other umbrella, or celery crops:

• leaf and root parsley;
• parsnip;
• all kinds of celery.

Bow feels good in the neighborhood with nightshade crops. Especially pests do not like the pungent smell of tomato leaves and potato tops. One of the good plant protectors is marigolds, which generally should be companions to almost all insect-damaged plants.

The third type of prevention is sprinkling aisles with wood ash. This method also has a second positive component - enrichment of the soil with nutrients, primarily potassium needed.

Another important point in the cultivation of any crop is the mulching of plantings. A thick layer of organic material on the soil simply will not let the fly fly to the soil or shoots of your onions, which means that there will be no egg laying with all the ensuing details.

A great way to prevent this is to spray onion plantings with scaring, inflamed infusions. Such prophylactic drugs against onion flies are:

• tomato leaves;
• tobacco dust;
• sagebrush;
• valerian;
• mint and lemon balm;
• needles.

Advice! Tobacco dust and ash can dust plants after rain or watering.

Bad advice

Supporters of organic farming categorically do not recommend digging the soil, and in all articles on how to get rid of onion flies, chilly is almost the main preventive measure. And here the authors rewrite this advice from article to article, justifying it by the fact that when digging, the larvae allegedly will be on the surface and die. Here are a few objections:

1. Onion fly larvae winter as shallow from 5 to 20 centimeters, and to this depth the soil freezes in almost all regions of the country even without digging.
2. What prevents the larva from digging in again, or do you need to dig on the eve of freezing?
3. Perennial onions grow in one place without digging for several seasons. Following the logic of the “diggers," these bows should not exist at all, since the pests should simply live under their roots, and in the spring eat up what they have not eaten since the fall.

Another harmful advice than cultivating the land from an onion fly in the fall or during the growing season is saline. Moreover, it is advised to carry out triple processing. First, 300 grams per bucket of water, then 450, and at the end 600. What is going to happen to soil microorganisms is not hard to guess. Salt as the strongest conservative will destroy the entire microscopic life of your garden.Therefore, processing onions with salt from an onion fly is undoubtedly bad advice.

Pest Control

What are the methods of fighting the onion fly if it nevertheless penetrated your beds and the defeat of the bulbs has already begun? Here, too, they advise in two ways: there are truly biological folk remedies, and there are also those that would be better to mention. But we will be objective and mention both points of view. Let's start, as before, with good tips.

Tar

Birch tar from onion flies can be used in two cases: pre-sowing soaking of bulbs before planting and processing of crops 10-14 days after full germination. In the second case, liquid soap is added to the solution for better adhesion. The composition of the drug:

• water - 10 liters;
• tar - 1 tablespoon;
• liquid soap - 20 grams.

If necessary, re-treatment should be carried out no earlier than two weeks later.

Ash composition

Such a composition that completely destroys larvae helps well from an onion fly:

• ash from burnt tree branches or dry weeds - 200 grams;
• tobacco dust - 1 teaspoon;
• ground hot pepper - 1 teaspoon.

This dry mixture is sprinkled with onion aisles, if there are signs of pest damage. But the composition can also be used as a prophylactic.

Cruel ways

Here we will describe the methods that you can use on another planet, and it’s best not to mess up your own site. As the destroyers of the onion flies, various chemical agents can be used, both industrial and “folk”. Although they can be called folk only in quotation marks, because they are directed against nature.

We will not advertise poisons that litter our planet, we can only say that they are mainly used by large producers of vegetables, who do not care about people's health. They themselves probably will not eat onions after chemical treatments.

The folk include a way to get rid of an onion fly with ammonia. It is as if ammonia appears in barrels among the people by itself, and is not a product of the chemical industry. We present to you, to improve education, and this recipe, as someone thinks:

• a bucket of water;
• three drops of iodine;
• a drop of potassium permanganate;
• boric acid - half a teaspoon;
• ammonia - one tablespoon.

Having mixed this powerful potion, go to the garden, and pour a mug of solution on each plant. Mother Earth will say “Thank you” to you!

Output

There are quite a few ways to control pests truly folk remedies available to every gardener. These are various infusions of plants, and combined planting, and mulching. Do not mess up your soil with chemistry, because our descendants still live on it, and enjoy its benefits.

Next, we present to you an instructive video on the use of birch tar as a means of combating onion flies.