By Doug La Rocque
When it comes to blueberries, raspberries and blackberries, it used to be a rather simple equation with Mother Nature. If you grew them, the birds would come and eat them. In many cases, a simple netting solved the problem. Over the last five years or so, a new player has entered the field, one not so easily dealt with as the birds. It’s called the Spotted Wing Drosophila, a fruit fly of East Asian origin. It was this invasive pest that was the subject of a symposium at The Berry Patch in Stephentown Tuesday afternoon, August 29. Dale Ila Riggs and her husband Don Miles have been testing new netting, that when draped over hoops, creates tunnels over the rows of berry bushes. So far it has proven very successful in reducing the amount of Spotted Wing infestation. The use of this netting has been shown to be many times more effective then using just pesticides alone. It’s not foolproof, some flies do get in from the tiniest openings along the ground, but Riggs and Miles deal with this by using what they call sphere traps. These are red spheres that are coated with a sugar water substance and a pesticide trap.
It’s not so much the flies themselves that cause the problem, but the larva they lay inside the young, immature berry. These berries rarely grow into the full luscious berries we all love. In case you’re wondering though, Don Miles said even if you eat these berries with the larva, it will not harm you. They are very small, and usually only seen through a magnifying glass. Riggs said the best way to test for them is to pick berries near the ground, put them in a black plastic container, fill with salt water and squeeze the berries. The salt water will draw the larva out.
The Berry Patch is one of a handful of farms in the eastern part of the state using this particular netting, and Tuesday’s forum drew a large crowd of other berry farmers who came to get the facts and see for themselves, how it works. Riggs, besides being a very successful berry grower, is also President of the NYS Berry Growers Association.