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Home remedies for fruit flies
contents
- A single animal becomes a plague
- Measures for fruit fly avoidance
- Fruit flies besiege the kitchen
- Liquid traps
- Duration of action of liquid traps
- Places to trap
- Other methods
- Fight fruit flies with their natural predators
- Health hazard due to vinegar flies?
A single animal becomes a plague
Each of us has probably already experienced something similar: first you only see two or three isolated specimens of the little one - and thinks nothing. Overnight or the extended holiday weekend will be from these few copies then suddenly a true flying army. Why is that? Unfortunately, the vinegar fly multiplies rapidly - after just one week, a single female (with a male pollinator) can have given birth to up to 400 live offspring under optimal conditions!
Fruit flies can be fended off with various natural home remedies. (Image: jeanete_ehab / fotolia.com) In addition to the destruction of living insects, the prevention of oviposition is crucial in fruit control. But where do the fruit flies favor their eggs? In addition to overripe fruit or small damaged areas in fruit bowls, they also like moist plant substrate and wet waste of various kinds. Penible cleanliness in the preparation of food and storage are therefore the first step in a fruit flies-free kitchen.
Measures for fruit fly avoidance
The small pest ghosts like to stay close to fruits, vegetables, sweet or alcoholic drinks and marmalade. Fruit that already has damaged areas (which may not even be visible with the naked eye!) Is preferably circled. Getting rid of fruit flies is not easy. In trade, the most diverse, already finished fruit fly traps are commercially available. These are liquid traps or yellow adhesive films, which are provided with a special fragrance. However, simple home remedies that are easily and quickly mixed together can just as well help to repel the flies.
In order to prevent any or at least not as many fruit flies from coming, the following helpful precautions have to be taken: Fruit should only be stored in small quantities and ideally in the refrigerator, as far as the fruit variety allows. For example, bananas are not suitable for storage in the refrigerator, as are most other exotic fruits. If a refrigerator storage is not possible, then an early consumption is recommended and cover the fruit. For this purpose, special covers are available in the trade, which have a dense mesh. A fly screen - attached to the window - ensures that the fruit flies from outside can not even penetrate into the apartment.
In order to prevent the flies spreading so massively, also a frequent emptying the trash cans is important. The compost should even be brought to the trash can or in the garden every day. The frequent emptying of the compost bin is recommended for that reason alone in order to keep the concentration of fungal spores indoors low. Drinks should never be left open for a long time. Glasses with sweet drinks or red wine, which should be drunk for a good meal, must be covered. Otherwise you have to swim the small flies in the bottle within a short time.
If your household rubbish looks that way and if it is seldom emptied, this provides optimal living conditions for fruit flies. (Image: curto / fotolia.com) Fruit flies besiege the kitchen
Fruit flies besiege especially the kitchen, but also the pantry. These are places where food - preferably fruit - is located. The tiny insects partially enter the apartment via the open window. Mostly, however, the plague ghosts are initially brought home with the purchase. Since the egg-laying is still tiny, we do not notice the pest ghosts when buying fruit. Just packed fruit is a place where the mini-insects (or their Eiergelege) can hide. The flies are most comfortable in ripe bananas. The larvae hatch relatively quickly from the eggs. A female fruit fly can lay up to four hundred eggs.
As the annoying beasts prefer ripe fruit in particular, apples and tomatoes should not be stored together with the remaining fruits, as these two varieties help speed up the ripening process of fruit. Fruit flies are also called vinegar or fruit flies. Baptisms are because they are mainly in the morning and in the evening on the road.
Liquid traps
Home remedy for fruit flies are mainly liquid traps that attract the little beasts and then drown in it. A well-known home remedy is the following mixture: two parts of vinegar are mixed with one part of water, three parts of fruit juice or wine and two to three drops of detergent. The whole thing can either be open or covered with a net. Here, the openings should be large enough for the flies to pass through. They then end up in the liquid and can not go back. The rinsing agent in the mixture is important because it changes the surface tension of the liquid, so that the small insects immediately sink into the water and drown.
Vinegar, water and dishwashing liquid mixed with honey also help. However, vinegar is not for everyone. As an alternative serves a sugar water, which should contain so much sugar that the water is saturated or can no longer absorb sugar. Added a few drops of dish soap and the trap is ready for fruit flies.
Another home remedy is normal dentifrice, which is available in the form of effervescent tablets. One to two tablets of this are dissolved in a little water. This is to attract and eliminate the annoying flies. A saucer containing lemon juice can also be placed as a trap for the insects. The same applies to some red wine or even whiskey, which is filled into a container and covered with a piece of cloth or cardboard into which holes have been cut.
If the small flies find optimal conditions, huge populations can emerge within a very short time, as on this banana. (Image: Henrik Larsson / fotolia.com.com) In principle, most of the liquid home remedies for fruit flies should be best filled in a small container such as a jam jar and then covered with a coarse mesh or a holey cling film. So the flies crawl into the glass and can not escape anymore. The traps must be placed near the fruit basket or biowaste for optimal effect. In a larger room, several vessels should be used to sustainably reduce the population of annoying flies.
Duration of action of liquid traps
Of course, the fruit fly traps do not work immediately, some patience is required. If the trap does not work, it may still be possible to help with a subsequent shot of vinegar. It is important that allegedly even tastier fly food such as ripe bananas are necessarily removed before trapping. With alternative feeding options, the pests continue to fly on our food and spurn the extra traps. Often, the individual amounts of ingredients for the liquid traps need to be changed slightly to allow the trap to work. When the target is reached and the fruit flies drown in bulk in the trap, the same mixture is renewed after two to three days.
Places to trap
Experience has shown that it is advisable to set up several traps, which are distributed in the kitchen or in the other affected places. As the flies like to use moist indoor plant substrate for oviposition, traps should also be placed near these pots. To combat the plague optimally, for example, liquid wine traps combined with liquid juice traps can be set up. For large rooms, it is advisable to place the traps in different corners.
Other methods
The fruit flies do not like onions. Two of them placed in the fruit basket - that can fend off the pests. This effect is also said to be chestnuts. These should also, if they are in the fruit basket, discourage fruit flies from the fruit. A sticky moth trap is converted into a vinegar fly trap by providing the trap with a small piece of fruit. The flies are attracted by the fruit and then stick to the moth trap.
Dried olive oil is also said to exorcise the insects due to its intense odor. For this, the dried cabbage is packed in a bag or hung up as a dry bouquet in the kitchen or pantry. Who would like to grow a plant, can get a small carnivore. The Venus flytrap, the sundew or the fat herb is said to have an attraction on fruit flies and eat them too. This possibility should only be envisaged if the green thumb for plant care is known to exist, as the carnivorous plants are not simple flocks.
As mentioned above, the fruit fly is one of the best researched organisms worldwide. It still carries out important basic research. (Image: Sebastian / fotolia.com) Fight fruit flies with their natural predators
Another way to get rid of the little beasts is to spoil their existence in our kitchen by their natural predators. As already known, the vinegar flies can also settle on and in our houseplants in case of heavy infestation. In order to counteract this, it is advisable to keep the soil as dry as possible and to apply some sand on the potting soil as the uppermost layer. If a flowerpot is already heavily infested and you want to save the plant, this can help nematodes. Nematodes are tiny and useful nematodes, which love to eat the larvae of fruit flies ... The small roundworms are incidentally completely harmless to humans and any pets. They are commercially available to purchase, and are brought together with the irrigation water to the plant.
Due to the adult vinegar flies in the room it may continue to lay eggs in the substrate, in which already do the nematodes their utmost against the larvae. To prevent further oviposition in moist soil, it is advisable to water the plant with a strong infusion of lavender tea. Lavender do not like fruit flies at all, they will look for new filing locations. Combined with some liquid or sticky traps against the adult specimens of the flies, you can solve the problem so sustainably.
Health hazard due to vinegar flies?
Vinegar flies are disgusting, especially if they are on our food. Fortunately, however, they pose no health risk to humans or pets. Even if such small beasts had already besieged the apple, it can still be eaten after thorough washing. In addition, it was found that the fruit flies are completely harmless to health and do not transmit any diseases. However, there is a danger of them in very strong infestation for our houseplants - especially for very young specimens - from. The small flies feed on otherwise lacking food supply simply their root tips, possibly until their death. For us humans they are only annoying pest spirits, which occur mostly in masses, however, are to be gotten well by home remedies. (sw, dp, updated 18/06/2018)