A few weeks ago I bought cuttings of dragon fruit plant, they are sort of like Christmas cactus segments except larger. I planted them in dirt that I bought from a nursery last summer to root them. Soon as I made the soil wet I saw a single fruit fly and I thought, "Oh crap." That means a thousand fruit flies in just a few days. Right as I'm preparing planting seeds for spring.
Plus all the fruit I bring into the apartment.
His method relies on the fruit flies flying into the bubbles.
Without an aerator the flies sit on the rim of a bowl without going in. So I learned how to put diatomaceous earth on the rim of the bowl similar to how I put flour around the inside of a bowl of proofed bread.
For bread I scoop a small amount of flour onto my hand and cupping my hand I tap my fingertips around the inside rim of the bowl so the dome of risen dough has a thin ring of flour around it. Then I jab a dinner knife downward along the edge rapidly, about 50 jabs, while turning the bowl with the other hand. Goes like this:
jabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjabjab
That delivers a thin layer of flour around the sides of the dough ball. The dough collapses a bit as it goes and slips out of the bowl without being torn up, to be stretched in all directions as a pizza crust.
Now, that right there is an advanced technique that you won't see anywhere other than here. There is no video, no book that will tell you this.
For the fruit flies, I scoop a small amount of diatomaceous earth into my hand and gently rub the outside of the bowl in a downward motion. That scrapes off a thin layer of powder and deposits it on top of the rim, right where the fruit flies sit. Turning the bowl in the same manner. Just touching that stuff will scratch the microscopically thin layer of wax that coats the insects bodies and dehydrate them within an hour.
And kills them dead, D-E-D, dead!
12 comments:
So basically he is difficult to basically listen to, what with his "air tank" diffuser and overuse of the word "basically". It doesn't help that he has a high pitched monotone voice and a pony tail - he basically reminds me of other burned out hippies I have encountered. Basically.
My hearing is shot - I kept hearing "disco" when he was saying "dish soap". That's on me, but enunciation is key, yes? I would try to pronounce each word separately rather than slurring them into one.
However, the fruit fly menace is real. Around here they die off in the winter so the battle is in a lull, currently. I am not looking forward to summer when they return and take over my living space. Time to bust out the diatomaceous earth and fight back!
Chip, you should give apple jack or calvados a try. I use them in cocktail recipes. Apple jack is stronger flavored where calvados. I've never used them in cooking but they're probably work if other flavors weren't too strong.
Basically, anything "apple-flavored" is flavored with malic acid. I have a small quantity of the pure stuff and it is the essence of sour apple. Malic is derived from the Latin for apple and is not to be confused with maleic acid which is a cis-gendered olefin and which also tastes fruity.
In winemaking, there is a process called "malolactic fermentation." This process is a secondary fermentation carried out after the primary fermentation. The process converts to malic acid naturally present in the fruit into lactic (milk) acid. Everyone recognizes lactic acid -- it tastes like yogurt. Anyways, many chardonnays are subjected to the process in white oak barrels. This gives the wine a buttery smoothness which many older women crave. The best-known buttery chard is perhaps Rombauer, known in the biz as "cougar juice." You should ask Lurch sometime whether he sells "cougar juice" and see if it elicits a smile or at least a "you rang?"
Sixty, he's a good hippy. He's smart, innovative, and he's found a balance between "information wants to be free" and capitalism. And he is friendly. So far, everything that I heard him say is sensible. His speech pattern doesn't bother me at all. While John's does. (John introduced Larry in another video.) John is also a philosophical hippy, but not by appearance who's found his own reasonable balance between free information and capitalism.
Larry set up his commercial micro green operation in a spare bedroom and limits his production to his own zip code while enabling others to emulate his success. That's a good hippy.
And like a patient old man he sat there quietly the whole time John was talking about Larry's operation. And you're wondering, "what is this guy going to sound like? A creaky old man struggling to organize his thoughts? " When Larry finally does speak, he burst into his spiel and tells his story again, well-practiced no doubt, and you're surprised such an old man has such tremendous energy and enthusiasm. I liked him right off.
For speech irritation, compare: This Beef and Dairy Network podcast is lauded for its humor and cleverness. But I can not make it past 30 seconds for its obnoxious British accent and harsh delivery of useless compacted information that's somehow important to them and 100% irrelevant to me. If it's clever, then it's clever for building complex structure around nothing for twee prepubescent humor that semi-intellectuals find amusing.
http://www.beefanddairynetwork.com
I could be wrong, as I say, I was driven off within 30 seconds. While everyone else was saying how excellent it is.
Here's irritation in real life: At Trader Joes, I was walking toward the olive oil section next to a pathetic arrangement of spices. A thin lithe dude slipped in between me and the shelves in a rather tight spot. He used his superior mobility to slide in front of me to get to the spot before me. How rude!
The he takes the shelf of spices and pulls it toward him to check the little bottles in the back.
I said, "I didn't know those shelves pulled out to a tray."
He said, "They don't."
I said, "But I just saw you pull it out."
He said, "No you didn't see that."
I held my hand in front of my face and waved it around, "I didn't see anything."
He said, "Trick of the mind."
I said, "I am not here."
He left. And I thought, "That's so unlike everyone else here. All that would have been tolerable even fun if the little cunt wasn't so rude and hadn't been speaking in a British accent. Piss off, too clever by half British person."
Yeah, he's better than a Brit, but my ears require enunciation these days. It's all on me.
WCPE hires announcers with nasty British accents and the only redeeming virtue is that the music lasts for a long time and the talk is thereby minimized. But boy do they damage our language - hoowee!
I try watching shows on Prime and Netflix but so many of them employ Brits that it is a struggle watch them. Better to be thrown into the depths of Tartarus.
CL my wife drinks Chardonnay, thank you so much for explaining why. I drink gin, I'm guessing for the juniper, but it could be otherwise.
You have to hand it to those cis-gendered olefins, they have an absence of malics.
Ha, good one, Sixty. But they sure as hell don't have an absence of malice.
The trans-gendered version is smokin’
So I was reading the ingredients on a can of stainless cleaner for appliances and guess what the first?
Oxalic acid.
That means you can clean with coconut milk.
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