Pest Control

Being kind to our environment is paramount to us.

We use a highly scientific, integrated pest management system, applying natural or non-invasive pest control methods where we can, and only resort to chemicals if absolutely needed.

For example, we rely on ladybirds to keep the red spider mite numbers down and mirrors are put in our trees to scare off peckish birds. Our primary concern is to minimise disruption to beneficial organisms, such as bees, while protecting our fruit against harmful ones.

Fertilisation is done according to ground and leaf analysis. Through weather station models we predict the life cycles of pests and fungal spores, giving us an indication of when populations will reach critical levels. This allows us determine when treatments are absolutely necessary. We further restrict the life cycle of particular pests by hanging pheromones in the orchards.

We take part in the industry funded and managed SIT (Sterile Insect Technique) Medfly control programme. This programme releases  sterile male Mediterranean fruit flies into the area to disrupt the normal breeding cycle of Medfly, a notifiable pest within the South African deciduous fruit industry.