Fruit flies - help needed please.

Use hairspray to blitz them when they are airborne .
I also have tried vinegar and washing up liquid to trap them , but they don't trap all of them .

Are they fruit flies or the little flies that breed in the soil?

I have had those in the soil and have tried everything - vinegar, some other concoction that didn't work, sticky fly catchers, covering the soil with small stones/tin foil.

This was last summer. I haven't seen many flies over the winter but they have recently made a comeback. Last year I moved the plants that seemed to have originated the flies away from my other plants.

The fly catchers worked to some extent. They were from Amazon

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BR349ZFD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?th=1&tag=gransnetforum-21&ie=UTF8

You have to make sure you stick them on the right way around. They don't look very nice with all the little flies stuck on them. They did seem to work but I had moved my plants into the porch so they were in a small confined space.

In the end - and I don't like doing this - I bought some fly spray. I had already put the plants in my enclosed porch. I sprayed at night before I went to bed. I had to do it for a week or so because of the life cycle of the flies.

I currently have two plants with flies. They have been separated from the others since last summer. I am seriously considering repotting them. I will take them out of the current soil, wash the roots if possible and repot them. Hopefully they will survive.

In the past I used to buy potted herbs from the supermarket. These always seemed to be full of flies. I stopped buying them

I currently have a pet one that appears every time I have something to eat. The washing up liquid and vinegar hasn't worked here but a random glass of wine attracts them like nobody's business.

I think I read that these aren't true fruit flies but I can' remember what they are actually called. Real fruit flies have to be reported to someone.

I get the fly spray out and spray that when the going gets tough.

I think the secret is to let the compost dry out completely before watering your houseplants. These flies, apparently, lay their eggs in damp soil. I had lots of them and now have discarded any house plants as I got so fed up with them.

They are called Fungus gnats and are attracted to laying their eggs in plant pot soil so you need to cover any plants with tiny stones like aquarium stones and they will be unable to lay their eggs and quickly die out They also like yellow so some yellow coloured lollypop sticks with sellotape sticky side out stuck in the plant pots
If you have no plants perhaps they are fruit flies but they need fruit so if you have no potted plants and no fruit I don’t know what they are !

I agree with BlueBelle, they sound like fungus gnats.

I found that they’re quite partial to cider, so trapped some with that. The yellow stickers in my pot plants were absolutely smothered in flies. The only other thing to do is break the breeding cycle by using gravel on the soil as BB suggested, or change the compost.

Apparently, they are coming in via peat free compost, so a gardening expert has said.

There was an article about this in the paper at the weekend. What we commonly refer to as fruit flies are actually vinegar flies.
Fruit flies are bigger and easier to swat, and have bright red eyes. (how you are supposed to get close enough to see their eyeballs was not explained...).
The most success I have had with keeping them off my windowsill herbs was a couple of supermarket cat flea collars wrapped around the pots.
Good luck to you.
Meg.

Thank you all so much. It's so comforting that when I have a problem you all rally round.

Super Ninja fruit Fly Killer is really good from Amazon.

I read somewhere that’s sprinkling of cinnamon on the soil deters them.

I just use ordinary household Fly Killer Spray , seems to do the trick no problem .

We get them at work. I use clothes washing powder dissolved in water, pour it into the drain, put the plug in, then pour the washing powder liquid in the bath/sink. Leave overnight, repeat this regularly. Hope this helps.

Thank you all. I've tried all your tips - and I will try the bath one today Blis1234 I changed the traps this morning and according to my granddaughter, there were about 50 or 60. I did go mad one day with the fly spray but even that didn't do it and made my asthma worse. They can't last forever can they?

It seems like you have already tried many methods to get rid of fruit flies. I recommend checking to see if they have a food source such as fruit or leftover food. Carefully remove all food scraps and make sure your trash containers are free of food scraps. It's worth checking drains and sinks for stagnant water, which could attract flies. In addition, you can try installing additional traps or using aerosol products to kill flies indoors.

But they don’t sound like fruit flies Macerena have you got pot plants ?

The number of responses just shows how many of us have this problem.
I have lots of house plants and I'm not going to get rid of them, so I simply kill the flies whenever I see them. They are attracted to food and buzz round me whenever I'm eating. I'm sure I must have swallowed a few without realising. Several have drowned in a cup of tea.

Here is a ‘real’ fruit fly. One of the most destructive insects we have here in Australia. They check at various borders to see if you are carrying fruits, it is illegal from one state to another to try to stop the spread.

You don’t have to get rid of plants curtaintwitcher I ve got dozens but if they are fruit flies you have to keep fruit or sweetness out of sight and if they are fungus gnats there are things you can do to prevent them

Yesterday, finally able to get rid of traps. Yes nanna8 I remember those when I lived in Australia. Thank you all very much!