I must say that having a little plot of dirt to call my own is one of the greatest joys of moving to a row house in Shaw. I love working in the yard, and look forward to eating tomatoes and other homegrown goodness yielded by the garden soon (given the number of buds already, I think it’s going to be an abundant tomato season).
One thing that’s not so glamorous about outdoor life, however, is flies. I don’t want to hypothesize about where they’re coming from or why, but a few weeks ago we noticed a plethora of the annoying insects buzzing around the backyard, some even making it into our house. Determined to alleviate the problem, I purchased a Rescue Disposable Fly Trap at Logan Hardware (LH sells the individual traps at about $7 a piece, if memory serves me). I’m happy to report that it worked really well.
It’s a pretty straight forward product: you pull up the top, add water to activate the attractants (note: the attractants in the bag stink; you will likely only catch a whiff of it every now and then the first few days—it seems to get stronger with time), and hang it in your yard (supposedly 30 feet from the area where you’d like to deter flies the most). After a few days, you will see thousands of flies trapped inside (supposedly 1 trap can hold 20,000 flies!). In addition to trapping the flies buzzing around your yard, it also prevents said flies from procreating and thereby increasing the fly population. We took ours down after about a week and replaced it with a new trap—the odor the old trap emitted and the 4 inches of dead or dying flies inside were too gross for us to bear.
We’ve noticed a marked decrease in the number of flies in our yard. I highly endorse this pesticide free product.
3 comments:
does it help with mosquitos?
No--I don't think it has any effect on the mosquito population. Fortunately we haven't had a problem with the blood suckers.
Anyone have a good mosquito solution? I've heard that a little motor oil on stagnant water prevents mosquitos from reproducing, but that sounds too environmentally harmful for me.
You can get mosquito dunks from LH or any other hardware store to put in standing water (if it can't be drained). They are a larvicide but are considered safe even with wild life animals around. I've included a link to Ace and to a more detailed product description.
I have read that lemongrass plants will deter mosquitoes but I haven't had a chance to plant any.
Ace Hardware link
Planet Natural info on mosquito dunks
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