Fruit flies are the scourge of the summer kitchen. With plenty of ripe fruit sitting out on the counters, my kitchen has been attracting these little flies for the past couple weeks, so I decided to search this site for a solution. A trick recommended again and again by readers in the comments ended up being the quickest, easiest way to rid my kitchen of these pesky flies. More

On Saturday morning we awoke to a rather horrifying sight: hundreds of little brown bugs pouring out of the pantry cupboard and across the kitchen floor. We've encountered ants, pantry moths, and grain beetles but this was a new one for us ... research revealed our new visitors to be grain weevils.

Here's what we've learned about grain weevils and how you can prevent them from invading your pantry… More

Fruit flies got you down? Yes, they breed like crazy this time of year, coming home with your precious fruits and vegetables. But you don't need to suffer their annoyances; make a cheap trap that will end their reign in your kitchen forever. More

You would be surprised how many household items can come to your aid when plants find themselves under attack from pests and disease. You'll find a list of ten items after the jump, just to give you an idea of what can be used before one resorts to a store-bought chemical or pesticide. Have you used any of these ingredients with success?

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Imagine the bug you see to the left, only shrunk down to the size of an alfalfa seed. A tiny, reddish-brown alfalfa seed. Have you ever seen those on your countertops or in your cupboards? Occasionally you may notice them flying around, too.

They're called grain beetles, and they're quite common. From their name, you'd imagine that they like to live in containers of flour, cereal, or rice, and you'd be right. But we recently conquered an infestation (not that hard, actually) and we learned a few things, including a very surprising place they like to nest. You may want to start poking around your pantry when you read this. More

Ewww, cockroaches in the kitchen! Do not want! But how do you get them out without using toxic chemicals? Yes, there is a way. Read on ... More

Here's a cry for help from reader Lena. Do you have any advice?

I have recently invested an incredible amount of time, energy, and money into acquiring, organizing, and labeling dry food storage, so that I can now buy almost entirely from bulk and skip all the packaging. It was looking great until not once, not twice, but now three times I have found maggots/bugs appearing in the containers!

The first time it was in granola and I thought it must be a fluke; maybe they made it in there from the store. But then they appeared in the quinoa, and then the flax seed. I don't have any other severe bug problems in the kitchen, and I keep things pretty clean. What can I do?

I love alfresco dining as much as any romantic but even as I dream about cold roast chicken and seven-layer salad under a big tree, I also have to wonder: but what about the bugs? Mosquitos, flies, midges, gnats, no-see-ums and (classically) ants are bound to show up at most outdoor meals. So how do you deal with them?

Mice in the kitchen! Have you ever had this problem? This is not a pleasant topic, and we'll be the first to admit that. But it's one that many of us have to deal with at one time or another, and we are curious: if you've had mice in the kitchen, how did you get rid of them? More

Why is there a bay leaf in our flour canister? More