How do you keep your fruit from the bugs? (Pahoa: buy, store)

[TheYogi]

I'm currently visiting the big island for 10 days to see if this is where we want to call home. We're just outside of Pahoa and were super excited to hit up a farmers market in hilo and grab lots of fruits talked about here. From pineapple to those red spikey ball things, we're enjoying ourselves! However, some uninvited guests in the way of ants quickly found their way to the fruits on the counter. Where and how do you store your fruit so that the bugs don't overrun everything?

Thanks!

[cynmkolohe]

I keep almost all our food in the fridge, except things like pasta and canned items like tuna or soup. Our bread, open pkgs of crackers, etc...in the fridge.

When I buy fruit, unless it is to be eaten that day, I buy it a little un-ripe (even at different stages of ripeness so some pieces will be ready before others) and leave it out. That seems to attract less ants. With practice, for example, you learn exactly when a papaya is ripe--and into the fridge it goes.

Years ago, I was told by an "auntie" working at the Dole Cannery on Oahu that it is a good idea to top your pineapple and turn it upside down in a bowl for a day or two before you eat it. Don't know if this is just folk wisdom, but now I always do it. (And if it's ripe before I'm ready to eat it...into the fridge.)

[Sweetbeet]

Yup. What she said - the fridge.

[hotzcatz]

Mix a little boric acid with sugar and put it where the ants can get it. They will eat it for a day or two and then be all gone. No more ants. Otherwise, you can set the fruit in a basket that hangs or sits on a pedestal and have that sitting in a saucer of water. Ants can't cross water. I usually put out the boric acid/sugar mixture, though since that gets rid of the ants. If the ants are eating fat then mix that with the boric acid.

If you have the fruit on a table, you can set tunafish cans under the table legs and either put water or oil in the cans and that keeps the ants off the entire table.

Next you'll have fruit flies.

The easiest thing to do is eat the fruit before the bugs show up.