Hi All, Lane County Extension Service Master Gardener John Fischer here KLCC's Good Gardening. My garden produces a lot of food. Fortunately, I have friends to take excess produce off my hands - this year it has been peaches and zucchini. And I have thousands of volunteers to help get rid of peels, rotten fruit, overgrown zucchini and the like.
The black soldier fly larvae is a great critter to find in your composter. But people are often worried the first time they see it because fly larvae are after all - maggots - and their squirmy crawly presence can be a little creepy looking until you realize that their sole purpose in life is to eat - your cast off scraps. And unlike the common house fly, the black soldier fly doesn't have a mouth, or spread germs.
All the adult flies do is mate and lay eggs - for the next generation of super compost helpers. I have talked to gardeners who found the larvae in their composter, and despite their commitment to organic gardening, went out, got a can of commercial bug spray and blasted the compost to eliminate the maggots. Bad idea - both using the spray, and killing a valuable member of the decomposition team. Breaking down the leftover material from your garden is a valuable, and necessary part of having a healthy vegetable plot.
The soldier flies don't usually show up until we get hot mid-summer weather, but once they get to work on your compost, watermelon rinds, fallen apples, onion peels and rotten tomatoes will literally disappear overnight.
They are fun to watch - once you know how great they are at turning garden waste into fertile compost. You can actually hear them chowing down if you get your ear close. So don't let their voracious feeding habits scare you - -they wouldn't harm a fly.
I'm John Fischer with Good Gardening.
