Tomatoes + Humidity = Fruit Flies

Yep, that's right...fruit flies! Ewwww. I'm not talking just a couple flying through our kitchen...I'm talking breeding ground. I shall explain (aren't you thrilled?).

As you have seen from my previous posts, we have our own little tomato farm going this year. At this point we think we are over 200 lbs. of the yummy stuff. After we harvest them into bags, we put them onto the dining room table. We have one of those padded vinyl table covers for this purpose. Well, what we didn't think of was the fact that the sun comes through those windows at various points of the day. Couple that with the insulation of the table cover....are you getting my point? It causes the tomatoes to ripen a tad faster which, in turn, causes them to OVER-ripen faster. The fruit flies are having a field day. Now, it's not like there is a swarm but we had the beginnings of one. I do use the word "beginnings" for a reason. Last week we went to pick out the smelly tomatoes when all of a sudden I saw something move. EWWWWWW! Tons of worms, or fruit fly larvae if you would prefer. Blech! Needless to say, I didn't take a picture. I didn't want to remind myself of what that looked like ( like I'll EVER get THAT visual out of my head).

So now I am getting a complex and am double and triple cleaning the tomatoes. I am throwing away tomatoes with cracks and am no longer harvesting those ones. Pity really since they are normally ok to eat. With all the rain we have been getting this past week it's "Fruit Fly City" in the backyard.