Worms in cherries are dangerous to humans. Worm Cherry: Fighting Cherry Fly

Every lover of fresh fruit at least once came across a berry with a worm inside. Many perceive this as evidence of the “naturalness” and ecological purity of the product, arguing that the worm will not settle in the cherry treated with insecticides. Fastidious people, after discovering an "intruder" in a cherry, throw the berry to hell. Eating wormy berries is unpleasant, this is a fact, so housewives should know how to remove worms from harvested or purchased cherries.

Where do worms come from in cherries

A small white worm in the core of a cherry is a descendant of the cherry fly. This insect, hated by gardeners, is very small in size (about 3-4 mm), it hibernates in the upper soil layer (up to 13 cm deep), turning into a yellow dirty cocoon at the end of summer. Wintering ends at the end of spring, after the flowering of cherries and cherries. They feed on a sweet substance that the cherry aphid secretes on the shoots of the fruit tree. Later, the flies begin to feed on the sweet juice secreted from ripe cherries.

When it comes time to lay eggs, the flies pierce the green unripe berries. The life cycle of worms is 25 days. They feed on the ripening pulp of the berry, making moves around the bone. Cherry darkens, loses its elasticity, begins to rot from the inside and falls to the ground. And the worm turns into a cocoon, hiding to the ground, and preparing to spoil the next crop. The best way to get rid of worms is to fight the cherry fly.

This is what a cherry fly looks like

How to get cherry flies out of the garden

For opponents of chemicals, there are effective folk tricks. Many gardeners advise building homemade cherry fly baits. Take 4 plastic bottles and cut off the tops. Pour a sweet drink into the container (compote, kvass, beer or water with honey or jam). Hang baits with sweet liquid evenly over the crown of the tree. At high temperature the drink will begin to ferment, and this smell attracts midges no worse than the juice of ripe fruits.

Periodically, the liquid will need to be added, and drowned insects should be caught from baits.

Early cherry varieties are less susceptible to "attack" by insects. They bloom before the midges wake up. In this case, the crop will remain safe and sound. Be sure to fight aphids. Its secretions serve as food for midges. It can be removed with the help of folk remedies: a decoction of wormwood or a solution of ash and laundry soap. The absence of aphids is the key to a healthy, intact crop. After collecting it, do not be lazy to remove all the fallen berries, because future pests will crawl out of them. Carrion must be buried to a depth of at least half a meter. There the worms will not be able to pupate.

homemade bait

What to do with a worm crop

If small worms are still seen in the collected cherries, they need to be fought. If you are squeamish, never crack a ripe berry. The sight you see may shock you and leave an unpleasant aftertaste from eating a healthy fruit. Many people ask what will happen if you eat a berry with a worm inside.

If the worm has been living inside the berry for a long time, then there is a small risk of poisoning. This is due to the fact that the pulp had time to rot. In this case, you will feel an unpleasant bitterness. If the fruit is still fresh, then nothing bad will happen to you from eating a small garden worm. The only problem is the psychological factor. It is very unpleasant to open a jar of jam and see the floating worms.

spoiled harvest

To pull insects out of ripe cherries or cherries, you need to use "grandmother's advice." It has long been practiced such a method as the infusion of berries in water. Some advise to take ordinary cold water, but the result will be much better if the water for infusion is salted. What you need to "rescue" 1 kg of cherries:

• 2 liters of water;
• 2 teaspoons of table salt;
• Bowl;
• colander.

1. Sort through the berries bought or picked in the garden. Remove leaves, twigs, rotten cherries and pluck all ponytails from the berries. This must be done so that the salty liquid enters the core of the fruit through the tail attachment hole.
2. Water should be at room temperature. Dissolve 2 tablespoons of salt in it so that no crystals remain at the bottom. Dip the cherries in the water. They must be completely covered with water. Leave the container with berries for 30 minutes.
3. After half an hour, you will notice the floating worms. Place the berries in a colander and rinse under running water. After such an operation, the cherries are ready to be eaten raw, to prepare preserves or to cook compote.

Soaking in water is currently the only effective way destroy insects without damaging the beautiful ripe berry.

But every year the same pattern repeats itself: cherries ripen, but you can’t eat them - all wormy and rotten. What's the attack? Turns out it hurts cherry fly.

The fruits of cherries and sweet cherries, affected by the cherry fly, become dull, dark, soft. Inside such fruits is a little white worm - this is the larva of a cherry fly. On damaged cherry fruits, pits and depressions form due to passages eaten inside, such fruits quickly rot and fall off.

How to get rid of cherry fly? First of all, you need to know the biology of the pest in order to successfully fight against it.

The cherry fly is a small insect. The body of the male is 3-4 mm in length, the body of the female is 4-5.3 mm, dark brown or almost black, shiny. On the back, yellow longitudinal stripes are visible. The wings of the cherry fly are transparent, with four dark transverse stripes. The tarsi, tibiae, scutellum and front of the head are yellow, the femora and back of the head are black. Eyes are green. The cherry fly winters in the surface layer of soil (1-13 cm) in the form of a pupa in a false cocoon. Cocoon 2-4 mm long, barrel-shaped, dirty yellow.

In the spring, as soon as it gets quite warm, the flies fly out after wintering. They need food. For two to three weeks, the flies feed on the sweet secretions of the cherry aphid, which accumulate on young shoots. As food, the cherry fly also receives the juice flowing from the fruits of cherries and cherries. After the flies "fatten", they begin to lay offspring. To do this, they choose green and beginning to ripen fruits of cherries and sweet cherries, piercing them and laying eggs of larvae inside.

The development of cherry fly larvae in fruits lasts 15-25 days, during which time they feed on the pulp of cherries, making passages around the stone in the fruits. The larvae then leave the fruit and fall to the ground, where they turn into cocoons.

As a result, damaged sweet cherries and cherries begin to rot and fall off. You can sometimes hear that cherry fruits can be rid of cherry fly larvae by immersion in water. And yet, I think that it is unpleasant to find wormy cherries in compote or jam.

Ways to deal with cherry fly

1.Try to plant only early varieties of cherries and sweet cherries. The fruits of early varieties of cherries and sweet cherries are less damaged, because by the time they are harvested, the flies have not yet had time to start laying eggs. Medium and late ripening cherries are much more damaged.

2.In spring, summer and autumn, carefully loosen the soil in the trunk circle under cherry or cherry trees. This simple agricultural technique can significantly reduce the number of cherry flies.

3. If the infestation of this pest in your garden is high, then will have to resort to spraying with insecticides. At least two treatments are required. The first spraying is carried out at the beginning of the mass departure of the cherry fly, when the soil is already warm enough, and the ambient temperature is above +18 o C.

You can determine the mass departure of a fly by the flowering of acacia. At this time, it is important to spray the soil where the flies come from. You can use yellow glue traps hung on a tree. It is very easy to make them yourself: stick bright yellow paper on cardboard, and apply ALT glue, which is used in trapping belts, as well as against mice, on top of the yellow color. As soon as there are more than twenty insects on the traps, this will mean that the mass flight of the fly has begun.

Try to re-spray in 10-15 days, but no later than 2 weeks before harvesting. To treat cherry trees against a fly, you can use any insecticide that copes with flying insects: Spark, Lightning, Karate, Aktar and many others. When repeated spraying, try to alternate the preparations so that the pests do not get used to the preparation. Also, do not forget that in order to comply with safety rules, regardless of when you carried out the processing, wash the harvested fruits thoroughly before eating.

4.When spraying the crowns of trees, do not forget to spray the soil around them as well., as the pupae of pests are in the soil.

5. If you are against chemistry, you can resort to folk remedies. As soon as it gets warm, the cherries have faded, take any sweet liquid (kvass, compote, honey water, beer), pour it into cut plastic bottles or jars, and hang these bottles on trees. Four jars, one per tree, will be enough, just try to hang them evenly throughout the crown of the tree. The liquid in the jars begins to ferment, and all insects fly to this smell. You just have to keep an eye on the jars, add fresh liquid, remove insects.

6. Try to spend as much as possible quick and complete harvesting of cherry or sweet cherry fruits. If fruit picking is carried out in several stages, the cherry fly will have time to damage all the remaining uninfected fruits, and you will again be left without berries. When harvesting, do not leave even single cherry fruits on the trees; cherry fly larvae can also develop in them.

7.After full harvest, clean up all the carrion under the trees and remove it from the garden or bury it half a meter deep. With this technique, you will prevent new larvae from entering the soil and the opportunity to pupate there.

8.Destroy cherry aphids, since it is the cherry fly that feeds on its sweet secretions. Along with aphids, you will have to fight garden ants, because they also feed on its secretions and settle on young shoots of trees. Under the trees, you can plant plants that repel pests: marigolds, marigolds. Against aphids, you can use spraying with a decoction of wormwood, laundry soap, tobacco leaves. Laundry soap is added so that the solution adheres better to the leaves, and it also creates an airtight film under which the aphids suffocate. Know: there will be no aphids - there will be much less damage by the cherry fly.

9. In early spring and late autumn, do a deep digging of the soil near the trunk circles of cherry and cherry trees up to 20-25 cm. This will disrupt the wintering and hatching of cherry fly pupae.

Subject to these rules, cherries and cherries in your garden will always be clean!

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Cherry is the earliest stone fruit that pleases us with its taste in late May - early June.

However, it is its fruits that most often suffer from worms.

Many gardeners complain that having cherries in the garden do not have the opportunity to taste its ripe fruits. And so it goes from year to year.

What to do if you also have wormy cherries on your site? ?

The worms that eat the fruit of the sweet cherry are the larvae of the cherry fly. They come from the eggs that the cherry fly lays inside this tasty and juicy berry. These larvae are extremely voracious, and if you do not start the fight against them in a timely manner, then you can not wait for the cherry harvest at all.

It is very difficult to deal with these pests, as they can adapt to various conditions and even get used to some of the chemicals that fruit trees are usually treated to combat the cherry fly. Therefore, methods of dealing with them should be varied.

Larvae, eating the pulp of cherries, thereby cause rotting of the fruit. Thus, they ripen faster, but become unsuitable for eating. Even a slight breeze causes spoiled berries to fall to the ground.

The larvae of the cherry fly move to the ground, where they turn into adults, which will become viable as early as next year.

Usually, this flying pest lays its eggs on the fruits of mid- and late-ripening sweet cherries. Therefore, these varieties are usually planted away from early stone fruits in order to prevent cherry fly larvae from infecting early horticultural crops.

How to deal with cherry fly on cherries?

How to prevent their occurrence

Preventive measures to prevent the appearance of worms in sweet cherries are extremely important. The future harvest of this stone fruit crop depends on their implementation by 50 - 60 percent.

Determine when this pest begins to fly out of the ground should be at the beginning of flowering acacia.

• To protect cherries from cherry flies, special traps are usually hung on trees: sheets of paper, painted yellow and smeared with stationery glue, are glued onto sheets of cardboard. When flies begin to fall into these traps, this indicates the beginning of their flight.
• You can make sweet traps. To do this, cut bottles are hung on trees, into which any sweet water (compotes, tea, etc.) is poured. The smell of fermentation attracts pests that drown in water.
• Since the larvae of cherry flies hide in the soil in the fall before the winter cold, where cherry flies are hatched from them, it is recommended to make deep digging in the fall. In the process of such tillage, pests from the deeper layers of the soil will move to the upper layers, and at low temperatures they will completely die.
• Since the cherry fly usually hibernates in the soil under the cherry crown, the main task of gardeners is to prevent it from flying out of the ground in spring. In this case, in the spring, when the cherry blossoms, the soil under the crown of these stone fruit crops is covered with completely black polyethylene and pressed down with heavy clods of earth or bricks from above. The fly will not be able to fly out into the fresh air and will die.
• It is better to plant early cherries. Then the fruits ripen before the period when the cherry fly begins to lay eggs.
• Also, for preventive purposes, it is necessary to loosen the soil not only in autumn, but throughout the season. Loosening allows you to reduce the number of this pest.

How to process cherries for preventive purposes

How to spray cherries to protect them from worms? For preventive purposes, trees are usually treated with copper sulphate or Bordeaux liquid.

• For such spraying, the solution is prepared as follows: ½ cup of copper sulfate is diluted in a bucket of water.
• For Bordeaux liquid, ½ cup of copper sulfate and quicklime are taken in a bucket of water.
• You can also spray these stone fruit trees with copper chloride (about 40 g of this chemical should be added to a bucket of water). Cherries should be sprayed with these solutions when buds appear on the trees.

What to do if worms have already appeared

Bordeaux liquid for spraying cherries should also be used if the larvae of this pest have already appeared on them. In this case, spraying should be carried out a couple of times per season.

When spraying cherry foliage, the soil should also be treated with chemicals, in which the larvae of this “harmful” insect can also settle.

If there are a lot of such insects in the garden, then insecticides can be used for spraying. In this case, you need to spray these stone fruit trees at least twice.

• The first time should be treated during the flowering period of acacia, when the cherry fly begins to fly out intensively. You can also focus on the first spraying on the complete heating of the soil, which occurs when the air temperature rises above + 17 ° C.
• The next time the sweet cherry is processed two weeks after the first treatment. However, this treatment should be carried out when more than 14 days are left before the harvest.

To process cherries (like cherries), you should take any chemical preparations that can cope with any flying pests: Lightning, Spark, Aktara and other similar ones.

However, when treating fruit trees, preparations must be changed periodically so that pests do not become addicted to the insecticides used.

And it should be remembered that if any chemicals were used in the process of ripening the crop, then the harvested sweet cherry crop must be washed well before eating.

Is it possible to eat wormy cherries

Many of us, when eating cherries, rarely look inside the berries to check if there is a worm or not. And those who drop in, seeing an infected berry, immediately throw it away.

But even if you eat wormy fruits, this will not affect your health in any way. You are more likely to get poisoned from a berry stuffed with nitrates than from fruits infected with a cherry fly.

Many people soak cherries in cold salted water for several hours to get rid of the larvae. You can do the same. But even the thought of eating a berry in which a worm lived and left traces of its life activity is unpleasant for many.

But to cook compotes and jam from wormy cherries, only pre-soaked, this is normal and quite acceptable

Cherry fly larva

When the flies have received nutrients, they need to lay offspring, and these are the worms that we often find in berries. Flies pierce a berry that has not yet fully ripened, plant a larva there, after which the berry begins to rot quickly and falls off.

Drug treatment

What to do if a wormy cherry appears - treat the tree as a whole. In advanced stages, when literally every berry is annually affected by larvae, spraying with insecticides is carried out.

• "Spark".
• "Lightning".

You need to process a tree at least twice a year: only in this case can you completely remove the worms.

Repeat the procedure two weeks before harvest. It is necessary to process the culture by different means, alternating them, because worms and flies quickly get used to the substance, and it ceases to act on them.

It is necessary to spray with a solution not only the crowns of trees, but also the soil around them, since flies that can lay their larvae can remain in it. You can even fill the soil with a preparation.

homemade trap

If you do not have the opportunity to buy expensive preparations for processing cherries, you can use an effective folk method, allowing to drive out the worms. This is a kind of trap for flies. To make such a trap, you should prepare:

• a few unnecessary containers (for example, small plastic bottles);
• awl;
• sweet liquid (concentrated sugar solution, any sweet juice, kvass, lemonade, etc.).

In bottles, you need to make many small holes just above the level that a sweet drink will reach. Hang such bottles evenly throughout the tree. Usually 5-6 bottles are enough for one plant.

From time to time you need to top up the drink and catch the worms. This method of struggle is really effective and has been tested by more than one person.

Sweet cherry fly trap

Preventive measures

So that the juicy and tasty berry is not wormy, you should do simple procedures that will protect the tree.

You can fight worms in early spring, when there are no fruits yet, you can loosen the ground by 20-30 cm so that flies fly out of it. This will allow you to extract even the larvae that are just starting to develop near the plant.

If there are worms in the berries, on the leaves, the fruits quickly fall off, make sure that the berries do not lie under the tree, as a fly will appear from each cherry, which will live in the soil under the tree. Then it will be several times more difficult to remove the worms.

Worms in cherries are not harmful to our health. They cannot exist in our body. Even if you accidentally eat such an insect along with a berry, there will be no harm. If all the fruits are affected by a parasite, and it’s a pity to throw them away, you can simply chop the cherry, peel it from the stone and the worm, rinse it under water and cook jam or some dish.