Carrot Seed Update and Fly Breeding Schedule

To plan for having an adequate number of fly pollinators at all times during the carrot flowering period you can map out the lifecycle of the fly to create a schedule and breeding plan. This could look something like the following based on a typical fly life cycle: Fly Breeding Schedule.

I’d love to post the spreadsheet here but it’s too big to fit nicely!

So while this is the theoretical schedule, I am not sure how necessary it is at this point. My last visit on July 22 showed a very healthy population of flies – well beyond what I could have imagined, from just a few collections on one or two days. These collections trapped flies for immediate release as well as facilitating the laying of eggs for later fly emergence.

But the fly breeding schedule at least gives you a sense of how long you need to keep the flies active for and what your breeding efforts might look like.

Here is a video of the enclosure I took on about July 18 showing fly activity in flowers and around the enclosure edges. It is a very good population considering the minimal effort that went into collecting it and appears to be growing.

https://youtu.be/W-9LwWpFE5w

And A few pictures I took on July 22 show the population is out of control!!

So this has me very excited about the ease with which flies can be captured and bred – potentially saving a significant amount of money when growing carrot seed in an isolation tent…