Nothing beats enjoying fresh, sweet cherries in summer. Best picked straight from the tree. But if a maggot surprises you when biting into the red fruit, it not only spits out the stone for a meter, but usually the entire cherry. Because one thing is certain: the little animals spoil the appetite. But are they also harmful to health or is it safe to eat them?
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Where are the maggots from?
The maggots that attack the cherry tree are the larvae of the cherry fruit fly. After the females have found a suitable tree in spring and laid their eggs there, the pests hatch after around five to ten days. At the beginning of June, the brood is already capable of multiplying again. Another generation occurs just two weeks after hatching, so that the parasites multiply on a large scale.
The young cherry fruit flies nest in the fruit and feed on the pulp. This causes the cherries to rot early. In severe infestations, the pests can render the entire crop inedible in as little as thirty days.
Finally, the flies can no longer find food and dig themselves into the ground, where they overwinter. As a result, however, they also appear in the following year. The inexperienced gardener feels safe when the animals disappear in late summer. However, if you want to break this cycle, you must have precise knowledge of the development process and the preferences of the cherry fruit fly.
The cherry variety is crucial
Who hasn’t experienced this? You look forward to a delicious, sweet cherry, but when you eat it, the fruit turns out to be a sour cherry. Even if the taste of the fruit is irrelevant to the cherry fruit fly, the pests still have a preference for certain fruits. Two features are important here:
- maturity
- the kind
In contrast to us humans, the cherry fruit fly prefers yellow, light-colored and unripe fruits. Because the brood does not hatch until summer, early varieties are hardly affected as they are already fully mature by this time. Unfortunately, resistant varieties are not yet available.
Is it harmful to eat?
However, eating it with a maggot in the cherry is completely harmless. If you don’t mind the extra side dish, you can eat it without further ado. An infestation only reduces the appetite. Unlike many parasites, cherry fruit flies do not transmit diseases. Most of the time, the eating goes unnoticed, since tiny larvae do not affect the taste. Nevertheless, nobody should eat rotten parts of the cherry.
remove maggots
A summer without cherries? Inconceivably! Fortunately, nobody has to do without the delicious fruit. If you do not eat the fruit right off the tree, but put it in a water bath overnight, you will drive away most of the larvae in this way. It is recommended to use cool water. If the cherries soak up the liquid, the animals flee. They crawl out of the pulp, making it easy to scoop them up on the water’s surface. However, there is no guarantee that the maggots will disappear one hundred percent. A few particularly stubborn pests may still be present.
Therefore, the safest, albeit most laborious, method is to cut up each individual cherry before eating and check for an infestation.
Prevent maggots in cherries
If you prefer to enjoy your cherries without preparation, you can prevent an infestation with the following methods:
- yellow boards
- Chicken
- cover cherry tree
- Plant early varieties
yellow boards
The color yellow attracts fruit flies. That’s why the specialist trade offers pennants coated on both sides that can be stretched on a string close to the cherry. If the fruit flies settle on the sticky material, they stick and starve there. It is therefore advisable to replace the yellow boards after some time.
Chicken
There are no health consequences to humans or animals from eating maggots in cherries. Therefore, chickens can easily feed on the fallen fruit. If the garden offers enough space, the farm animals are the ideal predators. They are already pecking the young larvae and eggs out of the ground under the tree.
cover cherry tree
An infestation of the cherry fruit fly can also be prevented with a foil or fleece covering the tree. Of course, this complicates your own harvest and does not look very attractive, but it also protects against predatory birds. In order to prevent the infestation in time, the gardener must apply the protection at the beginning of May.
Plant early varieties
As mentioned earlier, there is less risk with early-bearing cherry varieties. If you are unsure about this, it is best to inquire at the nursery. Examples of suitable varieties are:
- the sweet cherry burlat
- the early May cherry
- Kassin’s early
- Merton Glory
- and Teickner’s black heart cherry
