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How To Deal With Flies
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We get enquiries regularly during late spring and early summer from people with flies coming from their Compost bins. There are a few simple steps that people can take to stop them becoming a nuisance.
Fruit flies come from the fruit we put into our bins. The fruit fly eggs are on the fruits when we buy them and they hatch as the fruit ripens – whether in your fruit bowl or in your bin.
This year the fruit fly problem seems to be worse then ever and the only thing I can put it down to is that it rained so much in April and May people couldn’t cut their grass and this natural accelerant wasn’t going into compost bins.
Grass heats up piles and makes them decay faster which means that the environment for flies to multiply in exists for a shorter time.Also grass helps smother the pile.
Usually the fruit fly season and the grass-cutting season coincide but this year …
Things to do to prevent fruit flies:
Wrap your fruit and veg in newspaper. (nitrogen wrapped in carbon an excellent composting mix)
Bury these fruit parcels underneath grass in your bin.
At the first sign of flies leave the bin lid open so that they don’t gather and multiply.
If they start to build up smother the pile by either putting in a layer of clay or by covering the top of the pile with newspaper and then wet the paper to make it stick to the insides of the bin.
If you use a lot of oranges, bananas, pineapples and melons you may want to scald the fruit with boiling water before putting it in your bin. Some people microwave it for a short while but that’s a bit extreme.
If you have a lot of flies and the bin is only going a couple of months the simplest way to deal with them is to quickly lift the lid and throw a pot of boiling water in on top of the pile and close the lid. Let the steam kill of the flies so you can work with the bin. Then pour boiling water around the lid, sides and door of the bin. This will kill of any eggs that might be laid.
The boiling water will do no longterm damage to the bin when it is going less than four months. At that stage there is little or no worm activity in it anyway.
Once you have got rid of the flies smother the pile with wet newspaper as above and then pile in some grass - borrow it if you have to. A good refuse sack full that you will then aerate as you go along by burying your fruit parcels in it.
Fruit flies can also be a sign that you are not putting enough of the woody carbons into the mix - leaves twigs , newspaper, egg boxes, etc. Read over our How To Compost Instructions if you think that might be the case. Remember 60% nitrogen (green) 40% carbon (brown).
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