Thursday, May 18, 2006

The spinach I planted hasn't done too well, but this morning I finally did get to pick some. It was delicious in our scrambled eggs! It's so cool to eat something that I have actually grown myself. Speaking of gardening, last night I was reading The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, and I discovered how totally clueless I was about gardening last year (not that I am any expert this year). We had zucchini plants last year that produced these absolutely huge zucchini. I was really proud of myself for growing such big zucchini, but last night I read that you have to pick zucchini at a certain time, because if you wait too long they get too big, and therefore stringy and tasteless. Oops.

I'm having some trouble with my worm bin. The book I have says that a few fruit flies are to be expected, but my few fruit flies have turned into a swarm. Suddenly there are hundreds of fruit flies surrounding the bin. Ick. Today I took the bin outside, hoping the fruit flies would follow. Unfortunately, they migrated to the kitchen. Double ick. During dinner I had about five fruit flies drown in my iced tea. Lovely. I hope they will all die soon - I suppose I could just set out some iced tea and they will all eventually commit suicide. But what to do with the worms? I'm worried a raccoon or something will get into the bin if I leave it outside. For now, I brought it back in the basement, but I will take it outside again in the morning. I'm sure this is solving exactly nothing.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to get my hair cut and colored. I really have no desire to have my hair colored, but it's part of a gft certificate. I'm not even sure what color to choose, but I'm sure it will look interesting. Even if it looks awful, the couple hours of free ME time will be worth it!

7 comments:

mamaspeak said...

Well, I'm impressed by your huge zucchini! :)

Fruit flies can lay eggs and breed in drains if there's no old fruit or trash laying around. You may want to keep that in mind and watch your kitchen drain. They can be horrible buggers to get rid of!

Anonymous said...

This really worked well for me with fruit flies:

Take a large-ish jar. Form a piece of paper into a cone with a hole at the end about pea-sized. Put the cone into the jar, point inward. Be sure the cone is totally filling the entrance to the jar - flies will get in but not out.

In the bottom, put a half-inch of apple cider vinegar. Lots of things work, like banana, but cider vinegar worked best.

Anonymous said...

forgot to add, you might want to tape the cone into shape so it's easy to take in and out of the mouth of the jar without coming undone.

Anonymous said...

Oh, yuck! I hope Grandma isn't sleeping on the mattress in your basement!
There is always the calling-the-bug-spray-man to solve your ant and fruit fly problem. It works at our house.

Julie said...

I just discovered fruit flies in my worm box too! I have really ignored my worms lately. Lots of issues. We need to get together and have a worm pow-wow. My worms may soon discover the backyard compost bin, I'm afraid....

Catherine said...

here's another fruit fly trick.

Put the apple cider vineger in a shallow bowl. add a few drops of dishwashing soap and whisk it until it bubbles. the vinegar attracts tehm, and the bubbles catch them. they make a nice layer of fruit flies at teh bottom of the bowl. my favortie kind of fruit flies....dead ones!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your spinach. It is hard to grow enough spinach for a veggie dish. When I was out cutting asperagus today, I noticed a few raspberries getting pink. I love eating them and can't wait. I have no advice on fruit flies, except that I hate them.