Fruit Flies – How To Be Rid of them Naturally

It is fruit season and citrus and stonefruit are becoming ripe in the garden.  When the fruit comes to the kitchen, and particularly when the peels and pits go into my open compost bucket, fruit flies appear as if by magic.  It is amazing how quickly they show up and how quickly they reproduce.  Fruit flies are busy laying eggs in any spot on any fruit or juice vegetable such as tomato.  Gross.  Here is a quick and inexpensive method of trapping and -unfortunately- killing the little things.  I don’t like to kill anything, but I don’t know of a way to get around this, even when I drape towels over the fruit.

Take a small canning jar or baby food jar – something like that.  Use the rim of the lid of a canning jar, or just a strong rubberband.  You’ll also need a small piece of plastic to cover top of the jar; you can reuse some cellophane or part of an old plastic bag.

Fill the jar only about halfway with apple cider vinegar – not white distilled vinegar.  Place the plastic over the top and secure with the lid rim or a rubber band.

Take a toothpick and prick tiny holes in the plastic.  Set the jar near where the fruit flies accumulate and forget about it.  Be sure to remove other lures such as old kitchen scraps or fruit, or cover it with dishtowels.  That’s that.  The flies swarm to the jar and eventually disappear into it and can’t get out.