Sunflower maggot flies (FOY a week or two ago)

I forgot to blog it, but they've been around for the last couple of weeks or so.  (Not doing anything about them.)

TIMBERRRrrrrrr! Central sunflower crashed down.

Oh my!  The huge central sunflower fell down today.  The stem snapped. Weighed the head -- 3.5 pounds.  That lower part of the stem was streaked with brown on the inside, my guess is those sunflower maggot flies' babies.

The site, so alas, no harvest from this one either.

Still a few more sunflower heads from which I can hope to get a harvest.

It left quite trail of devastation, like a tree coming down.  Ground cherry and squash banged up, but, likely will be fine (not that I'm getting anything out of those central squashes anyway!).

Sunflowers are host to so many different insects

Very cool to see all kinds of insects hanging around on the sunflowers.  Sunflower maggot flies are always around, and just a variety of other things that I don't necessarily know what they are.  The huge leaves offer nice shade.

Sunflower maggot flies appearing in multiples

Saw four on one sunflower, a couple on another.  And yes, a "couple" they were...

Not going to do anything about them this year, and see if the plants/flowers/seeds make it.

Sunflower maggot fly has been hanging around the sunflowers

Noticed this interesting looking fly on the central-central sunflower the other day (at first thought it was a spider).  Yellow, with bright green eyes, and a neat pattern on part-translucent wings.

Today the fly was on the big sunflower in the west bed.

They lay eggs, which eat parts of the plant.  Apparently they don't do much damage in the process unless there are a whole bunch.  So, I've leave it be.