Onion maggots (Hylemya antiqua) are a common and often serious insect pest of plants in the onion family including onion (where they can be the most serious production problem), leeks, shallots, garlic, and chives. Onion maggots feed below ground on host bulbs, producing tunnels and damaging bulb tissue.
Using floating row covers over the young leaves during the spring to exclude the egg-laying females from reaching your crop. Clear and work the soil after harvest. This will destroy the maturing pupae in the soil and eliminate debris and unharvested bulbs that could serve as a wintering over spot for larvae.
Cover the maggots with lime, salt or vinegar If you find a maggot infestation in your garbage bin, cover the maggots in lime, salt or vinegar to kill them. Cleaning your garbage bin with a water and vinegar solution can help prevent future infestations.
Larvae (maggots) are creamy-white, legless maggots that are about 0.4 inch (10 mm) long. Microscopic examination is required to distinguish between species. Female flies lay white, elongated eggs on or near the soil surface near the base of the onion plant.
"The lifespan of a maggot is between 15 to 30 days, so if you want to get rid of them before they evolve into flies, you can try covering their food source with salt to eliminate their access to water," David says.
Most of the maggots will go when the bin is emptied. Once emptied the bin can be cleaned out with disinfectant or bleach and plenty of water. Use a cleaning product with a fragrance as this will help deter flies in the future.
Onion maggots (Hylemya antiqua) are a common and often serious insect pest of plants in the onion family including onion (where they can be the most serious production problem), leeks, shallots, garlic, and chives. Onion maggots feed below ground on host bulbs, producing tunnels and damaging bulb tissue.
Garlic makes a powerful natural insect repellent. Garlic can be used to repel a variety of crawling and flying insects, including mosquitoes,” according to Patrick Parker , SavATree Plant Health Care Program Director. One treatment with garlic is effective for 2 weeks and can repel insects for up to one month.
Garlic contains a natural sulfur compound which repels mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, black flies and most small flying insects. Taking garlic ( diallyl disulfide ) will cause your skin to secrete a natural insect repellent.
Mix 3 parts water to 1 part vinegar and pour the solution directly over the maggots. Let the mixture sit for about an hour before you discard the maggots and clean the area.
While there are quite a few methods for killing maggots, one that is proven to work is the use of salt. All living creatures require water to stay hydrated and survive. Since salt is a natural dehydrator, tiny maggots cannot handle. Any table salt will get this job done.
Maggots are attracted to rotting and dirty things. In the common household, maggots are mostly attracted by leftover food or decomposing perishable goods. Good maggot prevention, therefore, is about making sure there are no such things around the house – read our advice on deep cleaning your kitchen for help with this.
Lime, salt, water, or vinegar - Any of these three ingredients are effective killers of maggots. Just make sure to hit the infested area a few time to make sure that you've gotten all of the pests.
Lately, garlic has widely been used to treat intestinal parasites. The antihelminthic effect of garlic has been a matter of interest of researchers. Their results showed that treatment with garlic evoked a significant reduction in the worm load.
Raw garlic
Garlic is said to kill any existing eggs and prevent female pinworms from laying more eggs. You can ingest it in small doses or apply it topically like a salve. If you wish to ingest the garlic, dice up a clove and mix it into pasta or sprinkle it on bread. You can also eat the garlic on its own.
The sulfurs contained within the garlic extract have been shown to be effective against a wide range of insects, including mosquitoes, and the lingering odor can deter mosquitoes from the area for weeks. It is thought that garlic may be an alternative mosquito repellent for humans as well.
The sulfur component in onions keeps bugs at a distance by producing an odor that bugs hate. You can create a DIY natural insect repellent for your garden by combining four bulbs of garlic and a small onion with water in a spray bottle and applying it to your plants.
While many other fly control options on the market are designed to kill flies or interfere with their growth cycle, garlic simply repels flies. When cattle ingest these strong-smelling compounds, the unappealing odor comes out through their sweat glands and naturally repels files, who don't like the smell.
Maggots not only consume the dead tissue, but they also eat bacteria that might be growing in the wound, which further helps healing. Medical-grade maggots are germ-free and come from an FDA-approved company that produces sterile maggots.
However, if you want to keep them away, you must know what invites them in the first place. So, what do maggots eat? Maggots eat waste, overripe fruit and vegetables, meat, other leftover food, fermented substances, decaying carcasses and sometimes plants too.
Maggots can come out anytime, but you would suspect they only come out at night because their eggs cannot be easily seen. Flies lay their eggs and it hatches after 24 hours, so if many of them laid eggs in the morning, there's a chance they'd show up in the next morning.
Contact with a maggot can lead to low allergic reactions to high fever attacks. It can cause diarrhea and symptoms similar to food poisoning such as vomiting and feeling nauseous can also be observed.
The average maggot lifespan is roughly 8-10 days.
Because maggots are intermediate stages in the life cycle of flies, they only live for around 8 – 10 days before molting into the pupal stage and turning into flies.
Since a female fly can lay between 500 and 2,000 eggs during her one-month lifetime, it is important to catch the issue early on, as maggots can multiply exponentially as time progresses.