I know, cheesy title. It made me giggle so I do gnat care. It was a silly way to introduce a serious problem. I want to relate the beginning of my gnat problem and how it has been alleviated. Who knows? Someday this might help someone out.
Several years ago, I worked with a woman that had a large vase on her desk that held a beta fish. I was surprised how much I enjoyed watching that stupid thing swim around his confined universe. I thought it was interesting that she also had some ivy growing with the fish. The ivy was fertilized by the fish excretions while it filtered the water. Neat!
I happened see some beta fish at Wal-Mart several months ago and remembered how much fun I had watching the one back at the office. I bought a fish and ivy and went home to set everything up. All was well, but I had much more ivy than I needed AND it kept growing. I became somewhat fascinated and began experimenting with different ways to increase its growth rate. More ivy led to more pots and more wet potting soil. That led to gnats. I know they are small and just an annoyance, but they are an exceptionally annoying annoyance.
My researched on gnat elimination produced a number of commercial and DIY options. I didn’t like the commercial options because they all had fairly short life spans, mixed reviews, and required stocking more stuff in my pantry. I didn’t like the DIY options (mostly a water bottle cut in half and taped back together like a funnel) because they didn’t look nice.
After more research, I found a guy that was fairly scientific about testing the commercial and DIY gnat eliminators. He planned to try about 10 different options and record the number of dead gnats from each. About halfway through, his experiment was cut short because he accidentally left a bottle of wine open one night. The next day there were no gnats for further experimentation. It turn out wine is more than just a healthy, wonderful meal.
My final solution (pictured to the left of the fish) is a combination of wine, dish soap, and a twist on the DIY water bottle funnel . I used a wine bottle instead of a water bottle for asthetic reasons. I “simply” cut it in half, flipped over the top, and stuck it back in the bottom. “Simply” is in quotes because I found that step to be anything but simple. The wine is for bait, and the dish soap is a surfactant to reduce the surface tension of the wine. Without surface tension, the poor little drunks sink to the bottom rather than floating on the surface with the ability to haphazardly fly away in a drunken stupor. I thought I was going to need to put a seal between the wine bottle halves to trap them, but that hasn’t been necessary. Each sinks as soon as it lands, hiccuping its way to an intoxicated demise.
If you want me to make one of these for you, bring me a unopened bottle of red wine and give me a couple of days to get the trap back to you. When making the wine bottle selection, keep in mind that the effectiveness of the trap is directly related to to the price of the wine. Expensive wine bottles make much better traps.
For some reason, I have been fascinated with KitchenAid mixers since I was a little kid. I think it is because my parents had a large Hobart mixer at their restaurant, and I thought the smaller home edition was novel. Or more likely, they have gears, mechanical attachments, and a motor… three of the things that are dearest to my heart.
The grease they used breaks down over time and becomes a combination of a cakey substance and a fairly thin oil which drips from the case. I disassembled it, replaced the grease with Food Grade Machinery Grease, and all was good. This was about a year ago, and there has not been another drop of oil.
It looks like its on its way to being a fire pit, right? Well the cats seem to have a different idea. I assume you can tell what is pictured on the left. They obviously think I like them SOOOOO much that I would buy 600 pounds of concrete and mortar, 1000 pounds river rocks, work mortar until my fingers and hands were cracked and dry, and brave some of the hottest recorded days in Houston to build them a stone litter box. I bet they are bragging to the strays and gloating to the chickens about it right now.
Here is the finished product, although some of the mortar is still drying. The pit itself has an ID of about 4 ft. and a height of a couple feet. I included some vent holes by mortaring in 1″ PVC pipe and pulling it out after the mortar set. In addition to ventilation, I may use one of the holes to plumb black pipe if I decide to build a propane burner for easily starting fires and/or cooking.
, but I started getting nervous that the grate might not be a great idea. My concerns relate to the fire getting too much air, burning through wood too fast, not having the insulation of the ground, and losing that campfire feel. Rather than welding on legs, I am going to place it on blocks for a test run. It will become a cooking surface if I don’t like how it acts.
