[Kreeli]

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.

 

[soilman]

They will go away in a few days if they have nothing to eat. Do not put fruit in the compost, or anything sugary -- no ketchup for example, no tomato sauce. meanwhile You can spray the pile and your living space with houshold-type pyrethrin spray, or pyrethroid, that is low in toxicity and short lasting. Remove animals and people before spraying. Keep spray around for a while, then ventilate.

My compost piles don't have fruit flies, but I am careful to bury fruit below the surface. My kitchen gets fruit flies in the summer when I simply dispose of fruit in the kitchen garbage-basket and leave it there for about 20 hours. So I make a point of immediately removing all fruit waste outside, rather than leaving it indoors in a kitchen basket.

 

[GhostUser]

Soilman, I want to let you know how much I value the knowledge you're sharing in this forum. When I read Kreeli's post, I had no answer, but I knew you would have a very sound one.

 

[epski]

Damn fruitarians...

 

[soilman]

Fruit flies have short life spans, so once you get anything they can eat far away from you, the existing adults will die within a week or so and the eggs will have nowhere to hatch.

They will then go berserk with hunger and bite people (I think perhaps they confuse normal skin yeast with yeast that grows on rotting fruit), but they only make little tiny bites, which only sting for a moment, and don't swell or redden or anything, usually, and they don't transmit diseases to people, as far as I know.

 

[GhostUser]

Quote:

Originally posted by epski

Damn fruitarians...

 

[Kreeli]

Quote:

Originally posted by soilman

They will then go berserk with hunger and bite people (I think perhaps they confuse normal skin yeast with yeast that grows on rotting fruit), but they only make little tiny bites, which only sting for a moment, and don't swell or redden or anything, usually, and they don't transmit diseases to people, as far as I know.

WHAT? fruit flies bite people???? please tell me you're kidding.

good god.

 

[soilman]

They don't even draw blood. But you can feel it when they confuse you with a piece of fruit. It feels like a little poke with a pin for a moment, that doesn't draw blood.

 

[spud]

I don't know what sort of fruit flies you have, they may be quite different to mine, which are tiny but persistant. And mine also love onions which I keep out in a bowl. In fact they hover like a mist around anything edible if it's ripe. Today I gave up and put everything in the fridge.

The compost heap and it's visitors doesn't matter to me where I am now, but I have always put a layer of earth over kitchen scraps to keep the flies away and discourage any other passing visitors. In the plastic tumbler bin the flies still get in but are invisible until disturbed.

Maybe if you put one really ripe smelly fruit somewhere else it would lure them away from the compost heap. In England everyone always had their compost at the 'bottom of the garden', I thought it was to be discreet while the men pissed on it, but maybe it was because of the flies.

If you figure out about the fruit bowl let us know because I don't like eating fridge cold fruit, it sets my fillings off

 

[soilman]

"Maybe if you put one really ripe smelly fruit somewhere else it would lure them away from the compost heap"

Bad idea. Fruit flies multiply rapidly. The lure would increase the total number of fruit flies, within a few hours.