It’s that time of year again. Fruit fly time. Produce from the garden and the market is in abundance on kitchen counters and those pesky little bugs are well… bugging everyone. The presence of fruit flies seems to be popping up all over the internet.

We aren’t without our fair share of them here. We just don’t have the multitudes that others do. Sure, every bowl in our house is filled with some kind of fruit or veg. Heck, I even had buckets of berries on the kitchen floor. Oh they loved those.

There is no sure fire way to rid your home of fruit flies, other than get rid of all of the food sitting out, but there are some things you can do to lessen the population.

1) make sure your counters and sinks are clean. This even goes so far as to say keep the drains clean too. If you don’t have a disposal don’t try to shove food bits down your drain. If you do have a disposal run it frequently to get rid of all of the food bits.

2) inspect the produce you have sitting out daily. Any soft spots or mold is like throwing out the welcome mat for fruit flies. I go through the tomato basket and bowls every day to pick out the bad ones.

3) set out vinegar traps. Pour a small amount of apple cider vinegar (or beer or red wine) into a glass and cover it with plastic wrap. Poke a few holes in the wrap with a toothpick and set the traps near any produce you may have sitting out. The flies will fly in, but can’t get out. Just make sure to put out new traps every few days.

4) you could get a little gett-o and hang yellow sticky traps around the house, but they are unsightly and who wants to watch a twitching fruit fly on a sticky trap.

5) if all of that doesn’t cure your fruit fly infestation you may have a different matter on your hands. Fungus gnats. Fungus gnats are totally different than fruit flies. They feed on the organic matter of moist potting soil. Odds are if you have little flies flitting about your houseplants you have fungus gnats. The best way to cure those is to let your houseplants dry a little between waterings.

The good news is that once the soft produce clears from your kitchen the flies should go too.