Hehe, one of my friends tried the Venus Fly Trap approach and got mad because the plant never ate any of the flies 😉

In other news, you can make a veritable feast for your insect friends outside; mix dark beer, an old banana and some brown sugar… just smear it on a branch or fence post and the butterflies (and wasps and fig beetles and bees and “stink bugs”) will think you’re the coolest person in the neighborhood. Or you can use that combination as bait in the soda bottle trap inside…

Put white vinegar in a spray bottle; spray directly onto the flies to stop them immediately.

Any that you don’t spray, will wind up being caught in one of your ‘traps’ that you’ve already mentioned.

If you have a sun porch or patio, put your little plants outside for the better part of the day – spray your rooms, and bring the plants in at night when the flies and gnats are not as active.

After some searching, I found that this way seems to work the best, and cost the least;

Take some small cups and fill them about 1/4 of the way up with your favorite brand of dishwashing liquid. You can add just a splash of water on top of that, to help form the “fly freestyle pool.”

Now add a splash of some red wine vinegar or cider vinegar. A small piece of apple core works just as well, and helps keep the doctor away…

You know… “An Apple a day keeps the Doctor away…”

Try to keep up, huh? 😉

Put some plastic wrap on top, secure with a rubber band and then poke a few very tiny holes in the plastic.

Don’t use a Bowie knife, your favorite buck knife, or a meat cleaver. You want holes that they can crawl in thru, but not crawl out of… plus it’ll save you a weekend.

My wife caught me in the kitchen gleefully stabbing the stretched plastic wrap, and she called the cops…

72 hours later, they released me back into the public, after the shrink said I was “just a crazy Jew.” Muwahahahah!

But now I’ve been “Baker Act’d.” I wonder if I get a diploma? It’d be swell to attach that to my next resume when looking for a job a Krispy Kreme’s, or a line cook job at the Waffle House…

Anyway, back to our program…

The fruit flies fly in and can’t figure out how to escape. So, just put out the “fly spas” wherever you see them congregating. You’ll be surprised how many you’ll catch. Keep score, but not on the wall. Again, if your significant other is like mine, the “sense of humor” gets stretched pretty thin. 🙂

Remember that you have to be diligent… because the uncaught flies will continue multiplying…)

Intimidation works well, too.

Grab one, and then, in a loud voice, scream “Down the Hatch!” and then eat it! When the rest of his pals see that, they’ll head for the hills…

And for the John Wayne’s out there: Resist the urge to break out the “big guns…”

They are way too small to shoot. 🙂

Free Mental Image For Ya: Picture a Fat Jew in a Star of David Tie Dyed Shirt running around the house with a loaded Nerf rifle, blasting tiny little fruit flies out of the air… screaming “AH HA! Jew Fu! Got ya, ya rascal!!!”

Ok. If the flies hatched from the soil you do not have fruit flies, they should be a very dark brown to black fly/gnat. Your soil for your seeds/seedlings is too wet. First thing is to dry out your soil a bit, a heating pad under the plant won’t hurt and will speed up the process. next sprinkle cinnamon on the top of the soil every 2-4 days and they won’t be hatching anymore. That will also prevent damping off, which is probably the next issue you’ll have if your soil is too wet.

For the person above that had flies on their houseplants in the winter – those are likely white flies, pretty harmless except to the plant itself. Spray the plants regularly with water – PLAIN water. Anything else can damage the waxy protection of the leaves, etc. and you’ll loose the plant that way. I tend to rotate my plants in and out of my shower in the winter. Wash them down with a good “rainshower” and that keeps the problem in check.

Good luck to everyone with their spring seedlings 😀 I know I have spring fever something awful.

LOL, Wow, Ronin, I’d never quite thought of it that way! Pretty sure I’d rather have my dark beer without the old banana content, but the fruit fly concoction does sound handy for guests who won’t leave. Just call it a dessert beverage…

Heidi,

I call it a “Mother-In_Law Mai Tai!”

And I’ll try not to laugh when the old bat is drinking it… 😉

Or when she’s falling off her broom after drinking too many of “those delicious drinks.” 🙂

…I should add that I have (and live with) the most amazing mother-in-law (and father-in-law, for that matter) and due to the smell, she never gets within 15′ of the butterfly bait. She also doesn’t drink, or like fermenting fruit, though.

I was amazed at how I learned that cinnamon repelled flies. for some reason, I have never been interupted by fruit flies during my christmas cinnamon meals. I wondered why they always came by any other time, but during my christmas rituals with cinnamon, they are never there. they will fly randomly anywhere but when they smell the cinnamon where I am sitting trying to enjoy myself in peace, they just go somewhere else.