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Fungus Gnats

Hello,

So I just brought in some of my potted plants to keep over the winter. I have noticed some small fly type insects flying around. I did a search and I think they are fungus gnats. Is there anything (that may be around the house) that I can put on the soil to get rid of these things??

I do plan to let the soil dry out prior to my next watering. I also read you can re-pot into new soil, but I would prefer just spraying the soil with something (since I am lazy :)).
 
I had them last year bad needed yellow sticky traps for the adults and BT for the larvae but after about a month I had them gone they can get crazy if you do not take care of them.
 
I am curious because every thing I read when I had the Gnats said that in the larvae stage they do damage the plant if the numbers are high enough. Is that not correct?
 
I have a mosquito dunk (BT) floating in my water barrel and I don't have fungus gnats anymore. Maybe you can leave one in your watering can.
 
I got fed up with the cats jumping after them (cats do hurt chili plants when they land on them!) and bought some nematodes which cleared up the fungus gnats for about 18 months.

Alistair
 
I am thinking about trying the raw potato trick to get rid of the larvae and stick out a bowl of water with yellow food coloring in it to try to drown the adults!

We will see how this works.
 
inolan22 said:
I am thinking about trying the raw potato trick to get rid of the larvae and stick out a bowl of water with yellow food coloring in it to try to drown the adults!

We will see how this works.

So ^ is not working...there are more and more! I need to do something more drastic. I am making my own yellow tape traps (since I work in a tape production plant) and plan to get BT I guess.

willard3 said:
BT ......... Bacillus thuringiensis

Fungus gnats don't hurt chile plants.

Where can I get this?
 
inolan22 said:
Where can I get this?

It's in the widely available "mosquito dunks" I mentioned. A bit harder to find would be a BT liquid like the one made by Safer. The dunks you could find at most hardware stores, BT liquid would be at a good garden center or online.
 
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