blog

16 Apr 2008

Would you like flies with that sir?

Posted by: Alistair Macdonald

Would you like flies with that sir?

So we started composting a few months ago. We bought a Green Joanna composting bin for the garden and within a fortnight we noticed that we had halved our black bag count on bin day, we are now down to about 3 bags a fortnight. This was perhaps the biggest sense of achievement over and above the production of our own compost - the sheer reduction in rotting waste in the landfill (and the bin lorry).

So everything was going swimmingly until a couple of weeks ago when we noticed an unusually large amount of flies around the Green Joanna - not surprising given the volume of food waste rotting away in there - we had been following the instructions and layering garden waste along with the food but we fear we may have piled on the food too quickly, our kids are at times fickle eaters and often leave 3 quarters of their meal.

When the flies started appearing in the kitchen we began to get a bit bothered - I lit a few incense sticks opened the garden door and shut the kitchen door to let the critters be smoked out.

So I'm working away on my laptop an hour later when Shona arrives back and goes into the kitchen, the shrieks were worthy of a scene from Scary Movi, running to see what was up I nearly shrieked too - every surface above waste height was covered in flies - they looked like fruit flies and were quite docile. This was bad!!

My best friend is Policy Office for the Pesticide Action Network so my instincts were not to rush out and buy a powerful insect blaster but rather seek a natural alternative. We shut the door and began researching like mad while I am sure the rate of reproduction occuring in the kitchen was taking on an exponential nature.

THe most effective solution seemed to be a smoke bomb - but it contained insecticide - all of the other solutions were like leacve out a bowl of beer and let them drown - unlikely that 20 thousand beasties would fit in even the biggest of bowls....

Then Shona came across the brilliantly simple solution - Henry the Hoover!! Buddhists look away now - I spent the next 2 hours hoovering flies - got every last one of them.

We smothered the compost bin contents in fresh compost to effectively bury the waste - but we seem to be heading for round 2 - as you can see in the pic they are coming back......this is indeed a perplexing matter - we are kinda hoping that the compsting process will kick in soon - it's been about 4 months since we started - until then maybe we could invest in a gang of frogs.... 

I will post our eventual solution - and we WILL get one. 

Comments (3)
  1. Alana Hughes said on 28 Apr 2008 10:22:35

    lol well done, crisis averted! One good trick with compost is to encourage oxygenated bacterial breakdown by putting in scraps of paper - egg boxes, office shredder waste, biodegradable envelopes etc. This often helps to make your compost heap more efficient and less of a sludgy yet nutritious feast for flies.
  2. Alistair Macdonald said on 29 Apr 2008 11:11:50

    Thanks for the advice Alana! We are putting eggboxes in as standard but I think trying to adjust the ratio of non-food to food is probably the way to go - fortunately the current round of flies has not grown to another infestation and the heap is actually noticably more compact - I think it is really starting to compost!!
  3. Alistair Macdonald said on 06 May 2008 17:03:44

    Yep the flies are gone - we can compost in peace!

Post A Comment

All comments are subject to moderation and you are required to submit a valid email address (this will not be published).







Tick to be notified of replies via email.

Futerra Feeds

Our Expertise

  • Business Ethics
  • Social marketing
  • Corporate responsibility
  • Environment and Climate change
  • Behaviour change
  • See more of what we do >>