Stop Bugging Us!

I wanted to share a tip I found recently and just got the chance to try out.

My mom and her husband have a pretty active garden. He had been out of town this past week and weekend so she's been trying to keep up with the harvesting.

Unfortunately, that also means she had a few piles of various produce on her counter as she got it harvested and then put away in its prospective places (or given away to friends and neighbors). So she found herself with another type of harvest that wasn't quite as desirable.

A lot of people I know refer to those little bugs that show up during the summer as fruit flies. They are slightly larger than gnats and like to buzz around any fruit that is out. We fight them at our cold bar in the store. But you can carry them in from the grocery store with any of your produce (they particularly like bananas).

They were killing one of my house plants once and I looked them up online. The source I found said they were whiteflies. That makes sense because I think actual fruit flies are fairly large -- especially compared to these things.

In an effort to get rid of them at work, I looked up some solutions. This is the thing that kept popping up. And we gave it a try at my mom's this weekend.

You place a small bowl of apple cider vinegar (about a cup) on the counter or area where the most flies seem to be. Mix in a small amount of dishwashing liquid (we used about a teaspoon or two). The flies are attracted to the vinegar and get caught in the soap then drown.

It didn't really work for us at the store because we can't just put up all the cut fruit. So, the vinegar has too much competition from it.

But, BOY, did it work at my mom's! We got the produce put away (it was mostly vegetables) and we started catching them left and right.

The solution for my houseplant was to spray the leaves with soapy water regularly for a week. So this is on the same track for getting rid of them.

So keep that in mind the next time you're find yourself running into clouds of the things in your kitchen. It works!