Sustainable Fruit Fly Trap

Are you looking for a way to reduce the fruit flies hovering around all that great summer fruit sitting in your kitchen without having to use pesticides????

Well, after several years of trial and error research, I have a solution for you that actually works! Plus, you can make it at home with on-hand materials:

• An empty jar
• An elastic band
• Two squares of aluminum foil sized to cover the top of your jar
• A poking instrument, e.g., skewer
• One inch of an old banana with the peel

To assemble your SFFT:

1. Place the banana in the jar
2. Mold both squares of aluminum over the top of the jar so that when you remove them you have a rough cup shape.
3. Poke holes with the skewer in the bottom of each aluminum "cup", leaving 1/2 of the area without holes.
4. Use one of the "cups" to cover the jar - position so that the bottom of the "cup" is below the lip of the jar





5. Position the second "cup" upside down over the first "cup" so that the holes overlap the first "cup's" unholed area. There should be a space between the two pieces of foil, making a small antechamber to the jar.
6. Secure the two pieces of foil by wrapping an elastic band around the outside of the jar's lip.
7. Place trap near fruit

The holes will allow the scent of the banana to attract the fruitflies into the jar. If a fruit fly wanders back out of the jar, it will find itself in the small chamber at the top of the jar. While in the chamber, the fly will be drawn back into the jar by the banana scent. The only way it can escape is by choosing to walk or fly across the luscious rotting banana smells to the holes that exit to the outside world. Think about it - if you were a fruit fly, what would you do?

I usually leave the trap for 3 - 5 days - once it is satisfyingly full, I kill the fruit flies by running water through the holes in the top until it is full, then, in case some are clever enough to try to escape (and some always are), I upend the jar in a plastic container filled with water. Let the whole thing sit for a few hours, then dissassemble and flush the banana, water and tiny fly carcasses down the toilet or pour them over your compost pile outside and start again.