Fruit flies! They have invaded our house. They are crawling everywhere! All in our compost and everywhere else. So what do you do? Make a fruit fly trap! It was so much easier than we thought it might be
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I was amazed at how well this worked. I was also amazed that I could google something like "how to kill fruit flies" and have instruction for how to make this pop up. The internet is amazing.
That's essentially what I did and I was equally amazed. What a strange world we live in.
Now if only I could figure out how to get rid of the pillbugs that are eating my spinach and turnips without nasty chemicals, I might be the happiest woman on the planet.
Have you read those books on using tea extracts? My mom has done pretty well with those. (Well, I should say that the gardener my mom hired to use non-chemical pesticides has done pretty well with them, but what can you do.)
I'll try it. They have worked well for me with other pests and plant diseases. Somehow I thought pillbugs would be a bit more resilient. Now that I think about it however ... they're just bugs. Right?
Wouldn't that be sadistic of me to send you my fruit fly infestation?
Although I daresay it would be effective. As all of those poor fruit flies were winging their way across the country I doubt many would survive. Maybe that's why you only saw a few!
So- we've been eating a lot of fresh fruit lately, and since we no longer have a garbage disposal, a lot of the rinds and things sit in the sink or in empty milk cartons, and now we have about a dozen fruit flies. (Where do they come from? How do they get inside? I don't get it.)
Then I remembered you writing about this!
Anyway, we don't have ACV at the moment, so I am trying the trick with some pineapple juice and chunks of fruit that fell on the floor. We'll see if it works, or if I need to get some more pungent ACV.
They just like sweet things. I bet the pineapple juice would work well. Or you could mix honey in with regular vinegar.
But just so you know, ours didn't just fly in, they decidedly drowned. So what I was hoping would be a cruelty free way to get rid of them was a bit more sinister. I didn't mind that much though, ;-). It certainly did the trick.
I should post plans to build an indoor worm bin - they'll eat your scraps and it doesn't smell at all. That would also solve your fruit fly issues.
Well, 36 hours later, and I caught one fruit fly. It didn't die, it was sitting on top of one of the fruit chunks that stuck out over the juice. It was like a fruit fly on a deserted island.
We bought some ACV now, so we'll see if that does a better job. There's not a ton of them- I usually see just 3-4 at a time, but they've wandered from the kitchen into the bathroom, bedroom, and office...so there could be about 10.
I've been thinking about trying to compost- most of our garbage is food waste. I hate throwing it away, but right now we don't have any outdoor space, and wouldn't have anywhere to put the compost. Do you have a worm bin right now?
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Now if only I could figure out how to get rid of the pillbugs that are eating my spinach and turnips without nasty chemicals, I might be the happiest woman on the planet.
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Although I daresay it would be effective. As all of those poor fruit flies were winging their way across the country I doubt many would survive. Maybe that's why you only saw a few!
Reply
Then I remembered you writing about this!
Anyway, we don't have ACV at the moment, so I am trying the trick with some pineapple juice and chunks of fruit that fell on the floor. We'll see if it works, or if I need to get some more pungent ACV.
Reply
They just like sweet things. I bet the pineapple juice would work well. Or you could mix honey in with regular vinegar.
But just so you know, ours didn't just fly in, they decidedly drowned. So what I was hoping would be a cruelty free way to get rid of them was a bit more sinister. I didn't mind that much though, ;-). It certainly did the trick.
I should post plans to build an indoor worm bin - they'll eat your scraps and it doesn't smell at all. That would also solve your fruit fly issues.
Reply
Reply
We bought some ACV now, so we'll see if that does a better job. There's not a ton of them- I usually see just 3-4 at a time, but they've wandered from the kitchen into the bathroom, bedroom, and office...so there could be about 10.
I've been thinking about trying to compost- most of our garbage is food waste. I hate throwing it away, but right now we don't have any outdoor space, and wouldn't have anywhere to put the compost. Do you have a worm bin right now?
Reply
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