I'm at the crossroads because my different attempts at organic control have failed, or those that have worked to some degree have not worked well enough to warrant another bout of the disappointment. And exacerbating this is my grudging realisation that when I don't use poison to protect my tomatoes from fruit fly I actually buy tomatoes that have been coated in poison. The same goes for such as capsicum and eggplant. And while I don't have peach and plum trees because I don't want to spray them, I buy peaches and plums that have been drenched in spray.

My organic controls have been many and varied. I've tried pineapple spray, bait pots, sticky traps, bagging the fruit, netting each tomato bush and, with some success early in the season when fruit fly numbers were lower, the new bait Eco-Naturalure.

I may try a better design for the Eco-Naturalure bait stations, this time using two hinged boards in a device suggested by our Living Green journalist, Stephen Williams, and/or building an enclosure of fine mesh over the tomato bed.

I'd been toying with using Lebaycid because it works, no doubt about it. You spray the crop every week or two and, like magic, no grubs. Geez, it's a temptation, even though I know that Lebaycid's active constituent, the organophosphate Fenthion, is banned at any concentration in Europe, the US, Japan and many other countries because of its potential danger to humans. But not Australia, yet, so it must be all right then! The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has been moved by international concern to, belatedly, assess its approval of Fenthion. Still, an authority spokesman tells me that a decision is not expected until next year, and that allows us to squeeze in one more year of poison-coated but fruit fly-free tomatoes.

Must it be a choice between grub-laden tomatoes and chemical-laden tomatoes? Do you have a better way?