When your kitchen is full of freshly harvested fruits and veggies fruit flies can become a problem. Use this organic method for controlling fruit flies to keep their population down or even completely eliminate them from your kitchen.
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Summer Harvest Time
If your house is anything like ours, then this time of year your countertops are covered in tomatoes, peaches, melons, and more. This fruit is all going through its final ripening before they are put away for the winter or processed in the canner. And around our place, that also means it’s time for the arrival of fruit flies!!
Fruit flies have super smell sense and can find ripening fruit from a long way off. They are also so small that they can usually find their way into your home. Fruit flies don’t actually feed on the ripening fruit, but instead, they feed on the fungi and bacteria that occur on rotting fruit. So the first method for keeping them away is to be sure there isn’t any fruit with rot on it in your house. But despite our best efforts we always seem to get a flock of fruit flies in the house during tomato and fruit canning season!
Valerie took this picture of our chief fruit fly catcher. Our cat “Kiwi” will sit here all day long trying to catch the little fruit flies. I guess it keeps her out of trouble.
Some folks don’t have a problem spraying the little varmints, but I didn’t work hard all summer growing organic fruits and veggies just to contaminate them with bug spray in my kitchen!! So we were looking for an organic method for controlling fruit flies.
Organic method for controlling fruit flies
So here’s a quick tip we have learned to help control the fruit fly population around our house.
Put a small cup or other container on the countertop with about ¼ cup of apple cider vinegar
. Add a few drops of liquid dish soap
to the vinegar. We usually just use one of these little ceramic mugs, but you could also use a shallow bowl or even a pie tin. In a larger container, you may need to add more than a 1/4 cup of vinegar.
What makes this work?
The fruit flies are attracted to the apple cider vinegar.
The dish soap is very important. The soap breaks up the surface tension on the vinegar. So when the flies land on the surface to feed they sink to the bottom and drown. Without the dish soap, your vinegar just becomes a nice place for the fruit flies to get a drink. So be sure to add the dish soap, it only takes 2 or 3 drops.
This organic method for controlling fruit flies isn’t a 100% cure but it sure helps keep the numbers down.
This container was only out for just a few minutes when I took this picture and you can see we already have 4. Put your container right on the counter next to your ripening fruit or veggies.
Be sure to change the vinegar every 3 or 4 days. This will help you catch a large number of fruit flies in your house. We have found that it is extra effective if you happen to have a day or two where there are no tomatoes or other fruit on the counter. So maybe put out a trap right after you have finished a batch of tomatoes. That way the only thing the flies have to be attracted to is the apple cider vinegar.
Fast growing fruits – Get a harvest in the first year
I’ll try that cider vinegar trick. We’ve had fruit flies in the kitchen most of the summer, off and on. I won’t spray for them either. Does Kiwi teach classes on fruit fly catching? Our two cats could use some lessons!
Simple and effective solution! Love you Kiwi – she’s a beauty.
Great idea – I will put a cup next to the fruit bowl this summer.
Besides the normal yeast, Brown sugar that also works, I have found if you put in a ts of Vanila Essence. They love the smell and cant resit it. This will only work on a trap where they can’t escape afterwards
Some fly in and then out again. You can stretch some plastic wrap across the top, then poke large holes in it. They will find the holes and go in, but can’t find their way out again.
There’s a misconception that having fruit and vegetables attracts fruit flies. The fruit fly larvae are in the fruit. That’s why they can magically appear even from store-bought produce in the dead of winter. Right now I’m picking tons of raspberries and the moment they come in they are wrapped in very tight plastic wrap but within a day, beneath that plastic wrap are dozens or more of fruit flies. As fruit is ripening outside the fruit flies lay their eggs in it which are very tiny. Seeing how many came from very tightly wrapped fresh picked produce made me realize how many fruit fly eggs I’ve been eating over the time lol but isn’t going to hurt anyone. So while you may be able to catch most of each hatching, eliminating them is only achieved through not having fresh fruit in the house. Bringing in the fruit is bringing in the unhatched larvae