• Do you need help identifying a 🌶?
    Is your plant suffering from an unknown issue? 🤧
    Then ask in Identification and Diagnosis.

ok I have an idea to fight gnats and thrips. Might this work?

S

svtcontour

I was in the garage and noticed that one of my used 4L bottles of engine oil had tons of small insects attached to it because the outside of that bottle had some engine oil spilled on it and I guess the bugs were touching the oil and just becoming stuck and dying - like the sticky paper.

So had me thinking. What if I coated the inside and outside rim of every pot I have with a thin later of cooking oil such as vegetable oil or corn oil? I know that oil exposed to air start to get a bit tacky. If nothing else, it may catch the odd tiny insect no? Might also stop stuff from crawling in or out.

Has anyone tried something like this? If not, then maybe I will try it and report back in a week or two and let you all know if anything is stuck to the oil.
 
It may work in theory like stated above, but it seems like an awful lot of work if you have a lot of plants in pots. If it does work, you must also figure that the beneficial bugs may be effected as well. I'm not sure if a thin coat of oil would stop a praying mantis or spider from getting on the plant, but maybe lady bugs. Just a thought!
 
Straticus said:
It may work in theory like stated above, but it seems like an awful lot of work if you have a lot of plants in pots. If it does work, you must also figure that the beneficial bugs may be effected as well. I'm not sure if a thin coat of oil would stop a praying mantis or spider from getting on the plant, but maybe lady bugs. Just a thought!
Click to expand...

Ya I'm hoping that nothing big gets caught up in the oil. The container in the garage didnt seem to have anything larger than fruit flies or gnats, mosquitos so hopefully it will work for only the small nasties like gnats, aphids and thrips. Keeping fingers crossed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top