Fruit Flies. I like to believe that I can live up to my hippie-dippy ideals of loving all living things, but fruit flies remind me that I am not perfect in this sense. These little buggers have been driving me up a wall this summer!
So I have found that by reducing plastic and other forms of waste, almost everything that I throw away is food waste/compost materials. This means that our trash attracts and produces fruit flies a wee bit faster than the average.
Part of combating these tiny guys has been keeping our sink clean of dishes (we don't always succeed there...). But we have given in to the fact that they are here until it gets frosty enough to take them out. However, we still like to keep their numbers down and catch them as opposed to having them flying around our kitchen.
Enter, the fruit fly trap.
This has been really effective in taking out lots of fruit flies at a time. After 24 hours of having a trap out, most of the flies in the kitchen are in there. I have on by my kitchen window, on the windowsill holding my herbs, and by our fruit bowl (not in our kitchen because we don't really have any counter space).
Materials
1. Old jar - ones with a smaller mouth tend to work a little better
2. Apple Cider Vinegar
3. Several drops of dish soap
4. Old piece of fruit - I have found citrus fruits to work best
5. Piece of scrap paper / old newspaper
Instructions
1. Pour apple cider vinegar into jar so that there is about 1 inch of vinegar
2. Squeeze 3-5 drops of dishsoap into the vinegar. This breaks the surface tension of the water so that the flies get trapped in the solution.
3. Place the old piece of fruit into the vinegar
4. Curl up the piece of paper so you create a funnel entering the jar. The fruit flies fly down the funnel, but can't find their way out, so even if they don't get trapped in the solution they get trapped at the edges of the jar.
5. Place in an area where you have a fruit fly problem and let nature run its course.
You'll need to refill the trap every few weeks, depending on how fast the vinegar evaporates.