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Ah yes, summertime flies…sure does go fast. No silly, I’m talking about those little annoying flying things that always seem to be inside my kitchen scrap bin that I take out to the compost bin once a week. What can we do about them?

1. Have a kitchen bin big enough to fill with carbon layers. I use a 3 gallon rubber container with a lid. 4 bucks at Big Lots.
2. I suggest starting with plenty of shredded newspaper at the bottom and mix in your kitchen scraps when you get them. Keep adding more carbon if things get infected. It dries out your scraps and masks that succulent fruit smell those flies love so so much.

If you do have a lot of fruit flies, keep the lid on and take it outside before opening it and then let those suckers buzz away. Keep it outside and open a few hours during the day to dry out the materials inside. During fruit fly season you may want to plan on taking your compost to the outside bin more frequently.

I haven’t yet found the perfect solution, but having an air tight lid and a pet spider in the vicinity seem like a good idea.

Posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 1:18 pm under Newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.