Fruit Flies!!!

I HATE THEM!!!!

What do you all do to prevent them?

and

get rid of them once you do have them?

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Permalink Reply by Windlord on June 28, 2011 at 7:30am

First order of biz, is to ensure that your kitch is spotless. Clean up any potential food wastes, spots, stains. The bugs can be helpful with this if you see where they like to congregate.

Next inspect your fruit stash carefully. They'll only buzz around fruit with blemishes, holes. Fully intact produce doesn't interest them as they can't get through it.

Beware of imported apple bananas. My family had a veritable plague over the winter, and I think they stowed away in these nans.

Finally, some strategies to ethically vamoose those buggers you've got now. Put their fave cut fruit into a bowl and almost cover it with a towel, leaving just a small opening. Leave it alone for a couple hours, until many have crawled inside and are feasting comfortably. Then sneak up, flip the towel fully closed, and carry the whole lot outside, where they can fly away.

Or, put said fruit into a glass jar, cover with a plastic bag, seal with rubber band, and poke tiny holes in the stretched-tight lid. The flyboys will crawl in but can't crawl out. Repeat, the catch and release...

Soon, the few you might have left will feel so lonely, they'll hit the road too! :)

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Permalink Reply by ednshell on June 29, 2011 at 12:14pm

Nice explanation Windlord! :) This is exactly what we do when we get them, the kind, "no kill" way! ;)

A few years ago "they" were wrapping the ends of our organic bananas in plastic that had pesticide in it and I noticed that we longer had fruit flies during that time, from bananas at least. So at least they bring good news when they come, if they can live in your fruit then we can live on our fruit! :)

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Permalink Reply by CrazzyBeautifulAna on June 28, 2011 at 8:11am

My mom and I are clean freaks so our kitchen and fruit stash are completely spotless. we do have some pears with brown spots and blemishes tho. Maybe thats the culprit.

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Permalink Reply by Rawfruitygoddess on June 28, 2011 at 11:47am

Lol,they are a part of fruity life ;) I have named mine hehe,i know i know not helpful,leaving now.

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Permalink Reply by Heath on June 28, 2011 at 11:53am

haha, I just use them to help me rid of overripe fruit. I found some near my mangos this morning and I knew right away they were nasty old mangos.

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Permalink Reply by ednshell on June 29, 2011 at 12:23pm

yes, they are good little messengers! :)

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Permalink Reply by Seven on June 29, 2011 at 1:28pm

Cute :)

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Permalink Reply by M ♦ on June 28, 2011 at 12:36pm

I suffered with these terribly in one guesthouse in Thailand. What I did was get a plastic container and poke a few pen-sized holes in the lid. I put a piece of ripe fruit cut open in it and poured in a bit of vinegar on the fruit.

It attracts the fruit flies away from your fresh fruit and they don't die. You can just wait till they are all in there then take them outside when they can then fly away.

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Permalink Reply by Hummingbird on June 28, 2011 at 6:50pm

I just learned what NOT to do, which is start an outdoor uncovered open compost pile 15 ft. from the house. My compost pile became the most intense fruit fly breeding ground I have ever seen... I would throw compost on it and a swarm of flies 30 ft. high would rise up from the pile... thousands of them. And they were starting to infest my house indoors. So I decided this afternoon to just bury the whole pile and eliminate their breeding ground. Well.. I buried the pile and all the thousands of uprooted homeless fruitflies then SWARMED INTO MY HOUSE through the open front door (I guess smelling the next nearest fruit source).

They were everywhere, covering every surface... it was crazy. So I did something really un-enlightened and I vacuumed them. Normally I don't like to kill anything, but the vinegar traps I had set the week before didn't work that well, and that was only when there were a handful of flies. I had also tried smoking them out of the house with sage smoke and that didn't work either.

Now I'm saying a prayer to make peace with the fruit fly spirit, and it will go away on its own and leave me my space, and I will leave it alone as well...

In the meantime I have made my entire house spotless of even specks of dried fruit juice. I am keeping my compost in the freezer for now, and have put all of my ripening fruit in a giant plastic bin with a lid. I cut fruit in the sink on a cutting board, then rinse everything with water. I eat with a fan blowing on me so they don't track me down mid-bite!

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Permalink Reply by Bjorn Leistner on June 28, 2011 at 7:40pm

I cover my fruit on the compost heap with other garden-cut-offs such as leaves, grass etc, and no flies can get to the fruit, so no problemo. It also stops the fruit from stinking you out of the place.

I regularly sprinkle the compost with water to keep it damp - dunno if that makes a difference.

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Permalink Reply by ednshell on June 29, 2011 at 4:05pm

Nice going Bjorn! I dream of keeping a proper running compost pile! I really have not taken the time to get the amount of carbon (leaves) to nitrogen (my food scraps) it needs. We still get some lovely rich compost out of it but it does smell. I think an efficient running pile needs 80% leaves to 20% food scraps! I think I could start a compost business if I do it right or grow some fine food!!! If we move to an area with a bunch of 811ers, I could start a compost collection business too!