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Help! what the heck! I have gnats... LOTS of gnats!!

AmericanHwyFlower

AmericanHwyFlower

Please share with me what you all do to get rid of gnats on seedlings.. or in the soil in all my seedlings and potted stuff... what happened?!?!?!?!? I tried drying out the soil but they are still there... gnats .....all over the place....What do you all do or use to get rid of these??? And DONT tell me sticky tape... i tried that and yes a couple stuck to it but they are in the plants!!! All advice is appreciated =/
 
Try a spray bottle of neem oil and water..... lightly spritz them. Keep them out of the light and sun after you spray them
 
like the philman says, napalm the soil with a mild dose of neem. i still use the dollar store stickies to catch the flyin's but neem and soap seem to smother the maggots. for years i put up with just trying to kill them by hand. then i discovered neem. now, i have to be careful about neem soap on my plant's leaves as that i still haven't got that down to an art and burn the leaves. but for surface soil it seems to work.

good luck
 
Use sticky traps and mosquito dunks. Try doing a search for fungus gnats. There are several topics on it with useful info
 
thanks everyone....
Use sticky traps and mosquito dunks. Try doing a search for fungus gnats
Click to expand...
yes Megahot... i have been reading up on it... and this mosquito dunk..... you put it in water and let it sit overnite then water your plants with it to kill the larvae??? Is that how you use it?
 
Local humus can help once you let the neempalm wear off. Local dirt (humus) carries all sorts of mites that will eat the larva.


Those of you who have a greenhouse may notice gnats seem to hit very hard and then die off about 30 days later. This is because the new potting soil you introduced is fresh and hasn't had time to build up predatory insects, mites, spiders, and nematodes.

Over watering can drown air breathing beneficials, like mites, thus making a haven for fungus gnats.

So remember Beneficial are not just ladybugs, bees and spiders.


phytoseiulus-persimilis.jpg
hypo.jpg


Studies/info
http://www.biconet.c.../hypoaspis.html

http://www.just4grow...spis-miles.aspx

http://www.rinconvit...poaspis_BUL.htm
 
thanks Prehensile... that link has a lot of information.
And YES.... please tell us how you go so many gnats on the sticky strip... i only got a couple.
 
I found hanging it low works best. I had 6 hanging and the 2 on the top of a 3 tier grow rack system barley had any even though there were 48 plants up top. The next shelf allowed the strips to hang about 1 foot from the floor and I filled all 4. I pulled them all down today and the strip above had twice as many today.
 
I have one with 100 times more, they seem to like the light on my patio, since this is where I had the most problems with em I hung it there.
 
Initially I have laid my tape in the middle of my plants. I know it's a little risky to play with that stuff near the leaves but I figured I'd catch the most gnats there since they were supposed to be lazy fliers, well.. no dice.
I had more customers on the tapes hanging from my drapery 2-3 meters away from my plants, and obviously placed higher.
I've also noticed that the tape in the middle of the plants tends to loose its stickiness after a few days - it;s still sticky but not supersticky, it's probably cheap product, exposed to a lot of lights and a lot of heat, probably the gooey thing on it tends to solidify...

On another note, I've been dealing with those gnats for a couple of weeks now ... nothing to write home about, shouldn't there be any damage on the plants by now? I mean plants are doing fine - I see no problems so to say.
I use bottom watering so the soil is mostly dry but there is little fungus present so they should've laid larva anyway - I didn't use peroxide yet because .. well .. it's sorta difficult to get it here, the pure stuff anyway, not the one crawling with a dozen chemicals to stabilize the peroxide.

By any chance is it possible I have something else ? The bugs seems like fungus gnats, picture matches, the behavior matches but I haven't seen anything than those flying around, or am I being too confident ?
 
Let top soil dry, cut a potato in half and set it on top of the soil, then leave it for 24hrs. Pick it up and see all of the gnat larvae. Dispose of potato.

I had fungal gnats, I blame it on the Alaskan fish Emulsion. One I stopped using that, they went away. I've never had enough to consider it a problem.
 
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