well, as i described in my earlier post to this forum, we live in a townhouse complex and have a small plot of dirt in our "front yard" that is currently growing some veggies for us, and houses our little black compost bin. but we have a problem. a big one.
fruit flies. tons of 'em. they have really become a bane to our existance. they get in the house, they crawl all over our fruit (i like to keep some of our fruit out in a fruit bowl for my kids to grab as a snack anytime at all), and tonight i just found out they've started invading my neighbour's kitchen, too. she very politely asked me if we would consider moving our compost heap to the other side of our yard (the one that's NOT almost directly under her kitchen window), and of course we will, but it will be a few days before either my husband or i have time to tackle that project. and it still doesn't solve the fruit fly dilema.
i've looked around online and most websites say that you should be preventitive about a fruit fly problem...something that qualifies as "too little, too late" for us now; or else they say you should set up traps to capture and kill all the little flying buggers...but that sort of goes against our vegan natures.
how do we get this infestation under control? please help. i want to remain neighbourly and since this is a townhouse complex we are all in very close quarters. i don't want to give up the compost heap, either...we have been working very hard on it for months and months and are looking forward to using it's results next growing season.
fruit flies. tons of 'em. they have really become a bane to our existance. they get in the house, they crawl all over our fruit (i like to keep some of our fruit out in a fruit bowl for my kids to grab as a snack anytime at all), and tonight i just found out they've started invading my neighbour's kitchen, too. she very politely asked me if we would consider moving our compost heap to the other side of our yard (the one that's NOT almost directly under her kitchen window), and of course we will, but it will be a few days before either my husband or i have time to tackle that project. and it still doesn't solve the fruit fly dilema.
i've looked around online and most websites say that you should be preventitive about a fruit fly problem...something that qualifies as "too little, too late" for us now; or else they say you should set up traps to capture and kill all the little flying buggers...but that sort of goes against our vegan natures.
how do we get this infestation under control? please help. i want to remain neighbourly and since this is a townhouse complex we are all in very close quarters. i don't want to give up the compost heap, either...we have been working very hard on it for months and months and are looking forward to using it's results next growing season.