Summer: The Floors Get Dirtier, We Never Take the Trash Out and There are Fruit Flies Everywhere
This is one of the tomatoes from our garden. In the background you can see some of the heirlooms from the farm - one is bright yellow and shaped liked a pumpkin, the other is almost purple.
It sounds gross, right?
Last week, Don commented that there was no trash to take to the curb at the end of the week. We concluded there are two reasons this happened.
The first is that Arlington County recently modernized its recycling program and we can recycle so much more than we could before. Plastics up to #7. All paper. All cardboard. Tin foil!
The second reason is that everything is fresh in the summer and most of our ”trash” is compostable.
So because of those two earth friendly reasons we just didn’t manage to fill a trash can last week. Yay us!
Speaking of earth friendly, we’ve been pretty happy with our farm share this year. The quality is excellent and each week brings a huge bag of produce. The ONLY downside is that there is not a lot of variety. We’ve pretty much had a bag of tomatoes (TONS of heirloom tomatoes), onions, corn, cucumbers and green beans every week for the last month. I wouldn’t mind a squash, eggplant or pepper mixed in.
Another thing we’ve noticed is that all these fresh veggies - with leaves, a bits of dirt and corn silk - have a tendency to get all over place and we find ourselves sweeping the floor a lot more than in the winter when the veggies are often frozen or otherwise less fresh.
BUT - and this is where I am asking for some input - the other thing we’ve noticed that changes in the summer is the presence of fruit flies. It’s directly attributable to the amount of tomatoes we have in the house. Our farmer sends some every week and every day I am picking ripe tomatoes from our own garden.
I just don’t know how to store them. You’re not supposed to put them in the fridge, but how do you store them without attracting fruit flies? How do you store an abundance of tomatoes?
Tags: farm share, fruit flies, summer, tomatoes, vegetable
August 9th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Fruit-Flies
many useful ideas for building fruit fly traps.
August 9th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Fruit flies happen, so trap them!
Take either a wine bottle or a small bowl (preferably a white one). Fill partly with red wine or coder vinegar. SOmething pungent and a bit fruity.
Cover the bowl/wine bottle tightly with saran wrap and poke a hole in the top. Dab a bit of vinegar around near the hole.
Watch the fruit flies crawl in the hole and drown themselves, fun! You can see this better in the bowl and I also think there’s a crowd mentality where the flies go “oooh hey what are THOSE guys up to, must be something cool!” and plus it’s more satisfying because you can see them better.
Make a few of these and put them around the kitchen and they will significantly reduce your fruit fly population.
August 9th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
And that, of course, is cider vinegar, not some esoteric vinegar just for software geeks.
August 9th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Yeah - that’s how we trap them … I just wish we could keep them from showing up in the first place. We also throw a piece of fruit in with the cider vinegar, though I’m not sure that’s strictly necessary.