Monday, December 22, 2014

Why Are There So Many Flies in My Home?

OK. So why are there so many flies in my home/house? I hear you ‘scream’.

There can be many reasons you have a lot of flies in your home. Consider this one:

I came home today, the temperature and been up a bit up all day (mid 20 degrees C) and my home is a bit like a hothouse. It was mid 30s in the house when I got home and until I opened the doors and windows.

Then I started work on dinner. I found some fish I had taken out of the freezer a couple of days ago and forgotten about. Thinking it was maybe a bit passed ‘eat by’ even though it smelled Ok, I decided to put in my kitchen bin. 5 minutes later the house seemed to have an exceptional number of flies.

House Fly
I did four things and now there are no flies:
  1. I took the fish and the contents of the kitchen bin to the exterior garbage bin. – Flies have a sense of smell thousands of times better than ours!
  2. I opened windows to the sunny side of the house. – Flies are naturally attracted more to bright areas and are more likely to fly OUT open windows here.
  3. I lit a an oriental incense stick inside, and a citronella candle on the terrace outside the main open door – flies are deterred by smoke, including citronella.
  4. I turned on a pedestal fan – this helped circulate the smoke and create disturbed air currents which are also deterrent to some flies.
Other reasons I might have had flies in my home would be something had died in the house and blow flies had found it, multiplied and emerged from it, it is autumn and cluster flies have decided to over winter in my home, there is some rotting vegetable matter or animal matter close to my home, or there are blocked drains and fruit flies are breeding in the fermenting liquid in the drains. There are some other possibilities but the former are the most likely in New Zealand.

Your joke as reward(?) for reading my post:

A woman walked into the kitchen to find her husband stalking around with a fly swatter.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Hunting flies,” he responded.
“Oh! Are you swatting any?” she asked.
“Yes, three males and two females,” he replied.
Puzzled, she asked, “How can you tell which are male and which are female?”
“Three were on a beer can, two were on the phone.”


Monday, January 6, 2014

Weed Weapon Direct Hit – A new aerosol weed killer

Kiwicare recently launched a new member of its highly successful Weed Weapon herbicide range. Weed Weapon Direct Hit is convenient, safer, and as fast acting as the Weed Weapon ready to use spray; weeds will fall over with a few hours.

I have found it the handiest weed killer to have with me when I take a walk around the garden. It will fit in my jacket pocket. If I see a weed popping it’s leaves up through a crevice in the path I can give it a short burst of the highly directional foam and the weed will be dead the next time I pass by.

When spot spraying weeds it can be difficult to accurately hit the weed without accidentally hitting surrounding plants, or allowing spray drift to be blown onto nearby desirable plants. The foam of Direct Hit means there is no spray drift. It would have to be a very stormy day to cause the foam to blow onto other plants.

The foam is visible for about 5 minutes so that you won’t waste herbicide spraying weeds twice. And it requires only a small blob of the foam in the centre of weeds such as dandelions or thistles for them to die. It is not necessary to spray the whole weed. Even though it is convenient in the aerosol can, which usually means paying a higher price, because of the reduced waste of spray drift it is economical to use. I have found a single can of Direct hit is sufficient for over 300 weeds of the rosette type and I have used it for spot spraying such weeds in a lawn.


Applying Direct hit to weeds in a ‘lawn’

A few hours later the same day

It is recommended to wear impervious gloves when applying all herbicides and there is no exception with Direct Hit but as there is no spray drifting onto hands, or any other parts of the body, or if the foam did hit any part it is easily seen and washed off making it safer to use.

I did some testing on how accurate and effective Direct is and as you can see below I had some fun.

 
 
Direct Hit might not replace the Weed Weapon in a spray form but it has some big benefits in being easy to use, highly directional and safe for spot spraying, fast and surprisingly economical.