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magical maggot-free garden

 
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This is kind of just to brag, but also I post this news because of my astonishment. I garden in lots of random spaces and gardens throughout town. In the area, most farms are afflicted with carrot root maggot and apple maggot. There is one of my gardens where those magically didn't appear. And still, no maggots.

There's even a hawthorn in the same yard, which often harbors the apple maggot. And to top it off, terrible apple 'hygiene' has been the norm for years: apples rotting all over the ground through the winter.

The absence of carrot maggot is also a mystery. Everywhere else seems to have it. And I walk back and forth all the time to carrot-maggot farms, carrying soil on my shoes. Of course, after I started gardening there there's always been a healthy amount of benificial insect attractors flowering, and much diversity. But this place has remained pristine before I rolled around.

Big urban lot. Mowed lawn. Mounds of car parts and garbage. Beer cans up in the trees (someone threw them there long ago). And no freakin' maggots! If we can figure this one out it will give us some heads up to how to keep more areas maggot free.
 
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hmmmm. I know its a long shot but did people tend to burn wood or trash and spread ashes in the area. Ashes supposedly repel them. The reason that comes to mind is the beer cans; beer drinking often accompanies trash burning around here 
 
Kelda Miller
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<<<long whistle>>>

egads! there Has been lots of ashes as I've known it! And it wouldn't be hard to conceive that there's been plenty in the past too.

I in fact had to have a stern 'conversation' about finding my greens in the winter covered with woodstove ash all over them. ew.

burning garbage? highly possible. this isn't the classiest of places. it kind of gives me pause to wonder what may be in the soil then. I've tested for lead and found it at okay level, but I only tested where I thought it likely (next to the house). But if trash was being burnt elsewhere....


 
Leah Sattler
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I bet that is your answer then! "most" of the time when people burn trash its in a barrel so it would probably be somwhat contained to the surrounding soil (of the barrel) I would suspect. Wood ashes work good although they don't sound so yummy on greens 
 
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Are your apples still maggot free? I just got apple maggot for the first time. Will try putting wood ash on the soil this winter and then a layer of wood chips. If I cover the soil enough, I'm hoping it will do something.
 
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