i hate flies!
sthlndngrower
Posts: 160
My pet hate about spring & summer, is the number of small flies around the house. fruit flies in the kitchen, others in the sitting room, dropping in for a swim in my wine.... hate them.
i bought a pack of plug-in blue light things, quite cheap from a well known DIY store- they are totally useless! what I wonder is what really works? i do try and keep fruit in the fridge, keep things that are out covered etc. But these pesky flies drive me crazy.
do carnivorous plants actually work, or would i have to have enough to turn my home into a jungle for them to be effective?
the blue light thing... i think the plug in things i have are just lights with a bit of blue plastic, whereas i think what professional kitchens and butcher shops tend to have is something more than this... not sure what.
GWers- what's your best defense against small flies around wine glasses and in the kitchen?
Posts
I was bitten on my hand by a horse fly when on my allotment yesterday and my hand has swollen up - it's amazing what a teeny weeny creature can do.
I don't tend to get any little flies in the house but for huge bluebottle types that is one of the few areas where having a cat is useful.
Before I took on my late mothers cats and rescued a few of my own I would be enraged by the 'bottles zooming through the house, bouncing off the windows but now the cats seem to sort that all out for me. Occasionally it means there is a cat flying through the air like a rabid monkey, but there are no flies.
I bought a spray bottle of citronella to spray around my hen house but I've no idea if that really works.
I blame the horrid big flies on my cat. They zoom in to lay their wretched eggs on his unbeaten food. It only takes minutes sometimes. Also they smell any trace of the dead mice he brings in. Not a very sophisticated look these days, but if you can find those old fashioned fly papers to hang up they will put paid to some of them.
little flies (fungus gnats/fruit flies) can be caught using butterworts or smaller sundews, bigger stuff like blue bottles then hardy pitcher plants like sarracenia's and tropical ones like nepenthes work well as do giant sundews.