SUMMER is great for being able to leave doors and windows open for some fresh air – but not ideal when it comes to flies.
If you have a problem with pesky flies inside your home, there thankfully can be an easy solution.
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A listener wrote into The Ins & Outs Podcast, which focuses on all things interiors or exteriors, and asked what to do about their insect problem.
They asked: “How do you keep flies outside with the door open in a stylish, not plastic way?”
The question was then answered by podcast hosts interior design expert Jojo Barr and garden and landscape design guru Pollyanna Wilkinson.
They shared: “I’d say to effectively keep flies outside your house you need to prioritise sanitation and remove food and breeding sources.
“If you’ve got food left out, the only reason flies are coming into your house is because they can smell food.
“If they can smell trash containers.
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“Have you got wet cat food on show cat? You know dog food.
“The only reason they’re coming in is because they can smell your trash.”
However, they did clarify that if you’re “a very clean person, you’ve covered your food, you’ve cleaned your spills, you don’t leave any pet waste out, and you dispose of your rubbish”, there can be some exceptions.
The experts offered up one solution which can help: beaded nets that can be placed across your door, similar to what you get in butchers.
However, if you are looking for a more aesthetically pleasing solution you can try a “fly repelling plant”.
They advised: “There are certain plants, like basil, mint, lavender.
“You can hang all sorts of lavender around the house, like little posies.”
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Worm trick
Entomologist Darragh Ennis took to TikTok to share his advice for getting rid of the pesky bugs – called fungus gnats – as he admitted they even annoy him.
They’re also “really hard to get rid of”, even with chemicals, particularly when they take hold of your house plants.
But an invisible method of keeping them at bay works a treat, Darragh explained, and they’re called nematodes.
While you’ve “probably never heard of them”, they’re “little microscopic worms that live in the soil” and are “probably the most common animal on the planet”, but are invisible to the naked eye.
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They get rid of the flies by crawling inside of them and killing them from the inside out.
It might be “gruesome” but it’s an entirely natural way of killing the bugs.
You can even order the nematodes on the Internet, and they come in a small packet.
Once they’re arrived, put them in a watering can, add water and pour onto your house plants.
Why do flies come out in summer?
Flies are present all year round, but all of a sudden when summer comes, they are just EVERYWHERE!
The main contributing factors are the breeding cycle of flies and the soaring temperatures.
Insects are cold blooded and in summer, when their body temperature rises from the external heat, they become more active.
The hotter weather also let’s them seek out cool moist spots, like inside your home, to escape from the sweltering heat and to lay their eggs.
House Fly eggs take around 20 hours to hatch, but when the temperature rises above 37 degrees, can hatch within 8 hours!
In extreme hot weather the eggs can mature from larvae to adult fly in as little as four days.
The average lifespan of a housefly is 21 days, so each female can lay up to 900 eggs during the summer months!