After a fruit fly outbreak shut Wagga Bidgee Strawberries and Cream down for six weeks, the farm has re-opened as it continues to wage war on the pests.
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Riverina growers are struggling with the Queensland Fruit Fly this season after cooler, humid weather provided much better breeding conditions than the drier, hot summers of recent years.
Bidgee Strawberries and Cream shut in January after a mysterious bug infestation which was later confirmed as a fruit fly outbreak.
Farm owner Michael Cashen said it had been a "battle" over the past six weeks to fight back against the bugs, with the farm making the decision to turn the water off on half the crop to lessen the amount of plants they need to manage.
About 50 pheromone traps have been set up to catch male flies, and the farm is bait spraying to try and reduce breeding.
Mr Cashen said the farm had manage to bring fruit fly numbers down significantly with hard work.
"Every week, there's a lot of maintenance in it," he said.
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He said they re-opened to visitors over the weekend, and it was "lovely" to see young families back out enjoying the farm.
"People have really missed the business," he said.
The fight is not over however, and Mr Cashen said he was concerned the farm's proximity to backyards with gardens meant there was an ongoing risk of more flies returning.
He said it was important the entire community including backyard gardeners did their part to keep fruit fly out of the region.
Jim Rees from the Wagga Demonstration Gardens said there was one "simple solution" for backyard gardeners to keep fruit fly out, a solution that had seen the gardens go more than a decade without a single fruit fly outbreak.
"It's the only solution we've found that's worked and it's been working for us for 15 years now," he said.
Using anything from specialised fruit fly netting to shadecloth or even a mosquito net for a small plant, Mr Rees said covering fruit trees with a net and tying it at the trunk would keep the flies out.
He said gardeners should leave the tree uncovered while it is flowering to let the bees in, and put the net on as soon as the fruit becomes the size of a thumb.
"The other advantage is you don't get any birds and you don't get other pests," he said.
Mr Rees said fruit trees could be pruned down to about two metres in size to make it easier to get the net over them.
He said for a backyard gardener, traps and sprays were not worth it compared to preventing flies access to the tree.
"Once they get in there it's really too late, they're very difficult to deal with once they're in there."
He said if everyone in Wagga did the right thing, fruit flies would find it much harder to breed in the city's gardens.
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