I have said it before people…but it needs to be said everyday to everyone you know…and loudly… Fruit Flies Are EVIL. Any fly sympathizers out there need to read my tale of woe and victory and they too will understand and find themselves warning passing strangers. Here it is. When we went away for a week and left the worms unattended we had no idea what trouble they would attract. I, fortunately, had moved the worm bin into the bathroom for the week for fear that some uneaten goodies might pick up a stink I would not want permeating into my bedroom. Nothing puts hubby in the mood like a little rotting onion/fermented bean combo. Thank goodness I did because when we returned it was like that scene from Amityville Horror House…but with tiny fruit flies. My husband decided to take control of the situation and go at them with a weapon seldom seen chosen by our fiercest warriors…Method All Purpose Spray with a very manly cucumber scent…the strongest cleaner we keep on hand. After he burned through about half my supply I gently suggested that plain water would probably also take the beasts down. (I say gently because by this point my otherwise scholarly husband had taken on the appearance of Rambo…only instead of a machete he had holstered the Method squirt bottle and started murmuring something about taking my EEEEEEEiiiiidooooos for a ride to the country.) Once he eliminated the airborne we decided, bravely, to investigate the actual bin and see if our worms had survived the onslaught. Good news…the worms not only survived, but looked like they took the week of privacy to get their love on. Population booming in worm town. Anyhow…back to the evilness of flies. I warn anyone eating their lunch to turn away for a moment. Gross Alert. In addition to the fruit fly nymphs desperately trying to get out of the way of the dust buster my husband was now wielding, we noticed tiny little grains of rice everywhere. That’s funny…I don’t remember adding rice to the compost….ever. Oh…and rice doesn’t quite move does it? That’s right people…our bin was infested with fruit fly larvae. Yummy. Now with turned stomaches…but determined hearts, we set about rescuing our bin. First we removed the entire newspaper layer off the top…making sure no worker worms were caught catching a siesta. Next we got one of the boys tiny beach shovels and began the process of scooping out writhing piles of fly maggots, sorting through each scoop to make sure there were no worm egg pods or worms in the mix and heaving them into an old plastic bag. It took about an hour to go through the whole bin and we lost some of the hard earned worm poop…but it was a major victory in the history of vermicomposters verses fruit flies. And for worms everywhere. (I don’t know who he was fooling with all the tough talk about evicting the worms….you never saw any man search more throughly or gently to make sure each worm made it safely back into the bin. I swear if I weren’t looking he would have sung each one a comforting little ditty and offered tummy rubs.)

Now don’t get me wrong, we still get the occasional fruit fly. For that we are doing the ol’ wine/soap combo trap. Simply place a little wine or vinegar in the bottom of a dish with a few squirts of dish soap. The evil doers fly in for happy hour and don’t make it out. Diabolical…perhaps…but it keeps them from doing it in my worm bin. When worms get freaky…cool. When flies do it…gross.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 5:24 am and is filed under projects, worms. 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.