Question mostly for you folks on West Coast that have Spotted wing drosophila, Drosophila suzukii fruit fly in your area.  How big of problem has it been with Figs for you? I know it has really created major problems with berries like raspberry, blackberry etc…  and preferring  soft fruits and I would think it would love figs.  It has been found in Florida as well so I guess it is just a matter of time until we see it spread in the east as well.

The glassy winged sharpshooter is a serious problem in the west, but no problem with the spotted wing drosophila suzukii fruit fly... Are you serious?  Really?

The above is the reason I use serious pesticides!  Organic farming can't stop these insects from attacking our commercial growers, and I don't want to be a vessel that carries these things to destroy our nation's farming and agricultural food crops.

Suzi

It is already here on the East Coast. Has been identified in NH and I am pretty sure in all of New England.
The state entomologist told me figs are one of its favorites. Even so I've seen no evidence this season so far. Blueberry and peach growers reported problems.
Generally it is thought that earlier maturing crops will be less affected since the population takes time to build up. I think I will be emphasizing early maturing varieties even more in the future, like RDB ,Florea ,Malta Black,MBVS etc.. 

Go to your local ag supplier, and buy some Merit.  It's pricy, but it lasts a long time.  Systemic!  Does NOT hurt the fruit or you, but it destroys anything biting or sucking on your fruit or plant leaves!

Suzi

Suzi ,
No need to use such a big gun especially a systemic.
Trapping to see if you have them first then the lowest impact choice you can make ,otherwise we breed resistance faster and cause bigger problems.

I can feel that football heading straight for my head !

Kerry, I just googled some more and seems you are right unfortunately.  I did not realize it had spread as much already.  It seems very hard to control so maybe I can just learn to like their taste. Ants don’t bother me much anymore, but I don’t care for squirmy wormy things. I was reading on a different forum of a long time fruithead that is very discouraged due to this pest.  I had not heard much about them in regards to figs other than they do like them.

Suzi, not sure if I even want to research on the sharpshooter, sounds mean and I don’t need anything more to worry about right now.

I've been told it was first sighted in California in 2008 and by the end of 2009 had reached Abbottsford BC!  The buggers were on my blackberries in 2009 and I had no idea why fruit flies had taken a sudden liking to ripening blackberries.  They now go after every fruit with a soft skin, all berries, cherries, plums, Hardy Kiwis (all smooth skinned Actinidia species), and sadly Figs :(

This year I've found at least three larvae crawling on ripe Figs within a few hours after picking the Figs and bringing them indoors.  They really suck as they initiate premature spoilage in the fruit and there is NO effective control for them except to do as a friend a few blocks away has done and enclose his raspberries in a cloche or no-seeum netting once they have been pollinated through the end of their season.  Unfortunately that isn't feasible for Fig trees.

As the saying goes, "resistance is futile".  Get used to them and many more pests to come thanks to "Globalization" and Climate Change.  If they can survive your climate, they will eventually become established.  Thus far mankind has failed to eradicate so much as one insect pest despite dumping many millions of tons of toxins into the environment.

As far as those great "insecticides" are concerned, can you say Rachael Carson?  Best to leave them on the shelf in the stores that push them.

kiwibob,   Seattle

Visit my website:   http://sites.google.com/site/kiwifruitsalad2

I think the Fruit Fly caused all the issues transporting fruit over the borders.  I do remember staying in the house because air craft would come on a scheduled basis to spray for that fly.

They seem to have gotten a handle on it here.  Haven't see or heard of any dust sprayers for a long time.

Suzi

didn't know they were so problematic. i alway thought fruit files as food for poison dart frogs. once had everything set up for poison dart frogs.. never got the frogs that i was waiting for.. some are as rare as Maltese Falcon :)

These are not your common Fruit Fly Drosophila species that primarily attack rotting or fermenting fruit. It attacks undamaged fruit, and I am surprised to start hearing the damage done on Pomes such as apples, it seems not only soft fruits are targeted.

Bump

Did anyone observe SWD in figs this year. I know locally some folks reported major issues in berrries.

I was not growing figs yet this past summer, but I can tell you that the SWD decimated my fall raspberries. I had never seen them here before early fall. It remains to be seen what can be done about them. I'm concerned about my peaches and plums, and now my future figs.

I have always sprayed my apples, peaches, plums, pears,( or I would not get any fruit from them at all) but never my berries. I had hoped to be able to grow figs without sprays too, but if they are susceptible to SWD that is bad news

I'm pretty sure I had them this year. They were in my gooseberries and black berries. The gooseberries were not that big a deal because you can see the scar on the skin and the berries would be a bit soft. The blackberries were a bummer. I had one fig with cracked skin that had them, after that I covered any fig with open eyes or cracks with apple maggot bags as soon as they started ripening and no more tiny maggots. I didn't notice them in my raspberries or blueberries.

Thanks for this thread, I had no idea it was anything any different than plain old fruit flys. I was thinking I had ignorantly been eating these disgusting little bastards all these years. Next year I'll put out traps to thin them out and get a positive ID.

SWD are abundantly present in my area, affecting my Bing cherries from my one tree (not so much on my Ranier).  My neighbor has a 2 acre orchard of cherries and must spray several times for them.  They don't affect figs at all from what I've read and from my own personal observation.  I've eaten a couple of larva in my cherries and the damaged fruits can be quite disgusting!

Put up some yellow sticky card traps around your fruit and you can see what is there, how much of it before deciding what to do.  Anyone with soft fruit I feel for, there is fear they might move to tomatoes yet so who knows what their range will be.

get tobasco sauce handy.. everything taste better with tobasco :) 

Two years ago I had one variety of tomato (Carbon) which got infested with fruit flies, but I am not sure of the fly variety. That year the tomatoes on that plant ripened way ahead of all the others and I was going to try and let them hang as long as possible to delay processing. Well, I let them hang until one day out in the garden I could smell rotten fruit, it was those tomatoes and I ended up throwing 90% of them away