Fruit flies in the kitchen have been the bane of my existence for as long as I can remember (I wrote about this bane in 2004 and 2008, and received much helpful advice in reply).
This year I decided that it was a losing proposition to try to control fruit flies once they’d taken over: I needed to get ahead of them, and remove the conditions in which they thrived.
And so that’s what I did.
I never left food or dishes out on the counter.
I washed everything to be recycled, immediately.
I washed out the kitchen sink drains with vinegar and baking soda every few days.
I wiped down the kitchen counters constantly.
Despite all advice from purists, I stored all fruits and vegetables in the fridge, tomatoes included.
And it worked.
The kitchen wasn’t 100% fruit fly-free, but over the summer I saw only perhaps a dozen, and I took their emergence as a sign that I needed to double-down on my prophylactic control measures.
In saying all this, I suppose it’s equally possible that this year happened to be an off year for fruit flies for other reasons: perhaps the combination of sun and rain and temperature conspired to be inhospitable to them, and nothing I did had much influence.
I will chose to believe, however, that I conquered them through my vigilance.