Fruit Fly Triumph

Fruit Fly Triumph

Friday, July 21, 2023

I’ve been taken in by many a fruit fly hack. None of them work. Not the dish of water with a drop of dish soap and vinegar. Not the jar of vinegar and sugar water covered with plastic wrap and stabbed with a paring knife to let the flies in (but which somehow won’t let them out). Not any gizmo I have ever purchased. Not even squirting water on them with a fine mist from a spray bottle {which actually works better than anything else), but then water is everywhere. Then I came across the advice to simply wash all the produce you have sitting out in baskets, including bananas. The gross reason this works? Because there are likely fruit fly eggs & larvae clinging to the fruit.

Maybe this revelation is not new to many reading this, but for me it was a game changer. With the season’s first population of fruit flies having exploded on my counter, the timing of this advice couldn’t have been more perfect. I dumped the whole bowl of fruit into the sink and gave them a good scrub. The mere suggestion there may be eggs & larvae clinging to the fruit means I’m going to be immediately washing produce even if the method isn’t 100%.

The results were impressive. Not quite 100% but very, very close. I enjoyed my fruit fly peace for a couple of weeks but then forgot to take the trash out before going out of town for a few days. That set me back but I’m in pretty good shape now. Good enough to feel reasonably confident I’m passing along a competitive solution for fruit flies.

It’s such a relief. I hate having to put fruit in the refrigerator. A basket of fruit on the counter is the visual equivalent of a vase of flowers. And nothing makes summer sweeter than a beautiful array of cut flowers in the kitchen and the bounty of summer fruit.
 
To fruit and flowers,
 
E