I'm thinking maybe it was my backyard. Is anyone else inundated with a ton of flies on their patios/in their gardens? This is our first summer here, and we've never seen the likes of this ever before. They are all over our flowers and vegetable plants, even the hot peppers. They die just sitting there. We're on a relatively clean block, and we keep our garbage bagged up inside of a sealed bin. The other morning when my boyfriend left for work I noticed his car as well as all the others parked along the street (Firth) absolutely covered in flies. And it wasn't garbage day.

I guess I've got a few questions for all of you. Are you seeing this too? Is this normal for a summer season in this neighborhood? And I suppose most importantly, any ideas of methods to repel and or kill these stinkin flies? I don't particularly want to wallpaper our patio with fly strips. Has anyone been growing those "fly eating" plants they've been selling at Greensgrow, and do they work? I saw a hanging baited flytrap in the Vermont Country Store Catalog that they supposedly have been using in Iraq to alleviate the flies over there. Anybody familiar with that?

Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated. It's getting to the point that I don't want to hang out outside anymore, and it's a shame because it's my first garden ever and it was my favorite room in the house, until now. I can tolerate the fireworks every evening, and the police helicopter spotlights circling at night. However, I draw the line at fly infestation. Thanks for your help, everyone!

I've been noticing a lot more flies in the yard this year than I had last year. Even this past weekend when we went camping there were a lot more flies than usual...Odd.

__________________
Is this a news report or a trailer for a motion picture?

Oddly, it does seem that there are more flies this year. I don't remember it being such a big problem last summer.

.

I have some messy naighbors, although the flies don't seem to be quite as bad for me this year. Last year they were miserable. There are a couple traps you can make/buy that work pretty well, however it seems like they work best on a particular type of fly.

Fly strips work great on the smaller sized black flies.

Bottle with a small amount of a sweeter wine in the bottom works wonders on getting rid of fruit flies.

Home Depot/Lowes sells a fly trap that looks like a cylindrical bottle with a tube through it. It comes with a bait you mix with water. I was skeptical, but it works really well.

I'm experimenting with a couple other ones....if I figure anything out I'll pass it along.

I don't have a fly problem, I have a mosquito problem. According to my neighbor, our backyards are a couple feet above an underground creek so that's why it's always so damp back there. The dampness plus a lot of shade (it's like a jungle back there, and I've cut a lot of stuff back) equals a ton of mosquitoes.

I haven't experienced any fly issues but the mosquitos in my backyard are out of control. I get 3 to 5 bites in 5 minutes in my backyard. It is horrible.....anyone have any ideas to help. FYI - Mine seem to be completely indifferent to Off.

Some people just let their dogs in the back yard to do their business. If it isn't cleaned promptly there will be a million flies.
Doesn't anyone exercise their dogs anymore?
A pet peeve of mine.

I've also noticed tons of flies in my yard on flowers and other plants. Its def much more then in years past. I'm not sure what the deal is either

Mosquitos are usually from a local source of standing water. They don't tend to travel far. The only way to get the population down is to remove all sources of water and then get rid of all the excess vegetation. The worst is ivy or other vines. even overgrown lawns will attract hordes of the bloodsuckers. There is a reason everyone used to concrete their entire yards and there were no trees. One discarded tire with water in it can produce thousands of mosquitos.