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pests To soon for pest control?

sknxvll

sknxvll

I have a range from 4 day old sprouts to ones that are a few weeks old. I have noticed a few gnats (2-3) flying around the area as well as an occasional house fly that gets in. I read that a little dawn and water can kill pests.....are my babies to young for this? Is there a ratio I'd want to use on them being this young like 1 teaspoon to a gallon etc?

Thanks

Shauna
 
Hello Shauna,
If you let the soil dry a bit it will reduce the fungus gnats. alot of people suggest a small piece of "mosquito dunks" with your watering.
Ive even heard of sprinkling cinnamon on the soil.

Never too early to kill them nasty things!

:cool:
Kevin
 
DO NOT USE CINNAMON!!!!! I read that last year and tried it. It nearly killed my plants!! Go to Lowe's oe Home Depot and get the mosquito dunks. They look like grayish doughnuts made out of sand. lol Also try a few of those sticky fly trap thingies that you can hang up. I killed tons of gnats with those as well. After using both, mine were gone pretty quickly.
 
Regular fly tape(brown coloured) doesn't work as well as the yellow sticky stuff.
Yellow attracts more bugs.They sell a blue one that attracts some other bug but I think the yellow is for Gnats.
I personally cut the yellow strips into 3 the long way and hang them everywhere.

They are great at sticking to stuff like your arm etc. when you reach for a plant while watering...

The strips only kill the stuff that sticks to them.No poison is involved.
 
what about DE or sevin dust...? will it kill the seedlings...? i have a bunch of gnats in my little planties...
 
What I did was a I took a few of the mosquito dunks and put them in a sandwich baggie, then broke them up with a hammer. Worked great. Sprinkled it around the base of my plants, watered, and a few days later, no gnats! If you just kill the ones that are flying around, their eggs will pop up fairly quickly and keep reproducing. The dunks will kill them for good. But, I think there's only 6 per package, and they're like $10 a package. They work great, but can be pricey if you have a lot of plants. I would say an average of one dunk per plant was about what I used.
 
DE never worked for me.
DE is supposed to dry out whatever crawls through it.If it is wet it doesn't work.
Dunks work the best.They also sell the dunks in granules.
I had a pot of water that always had dunks soaking in it for watering.
Since I learned to water,I don't use them any more.

http://www.biconet.com/biocontrol/bti.html
 
I dont think gnats actually do anything...anywho ya dry out the surface use traps and if you must ive had very goodluck with organics like insecticidal soap and diamontasious earth. Neither really does anything to the plants. Btw this last set of seedlings i had a gnat infestation and went away for a weekend doing nothing to them and they all died off. Your milage may vary
 
neem oil works great and is organic. can be used up to day of harvest. i also make my own out of tomato plant leaves, garlic cloves, vegetable oil, soap and water. it works great...just stinks house up due to garlic. but even without garlic, it works good. neem oil bout 8 bucks at home depot and it actually smells good. good luck and remember, gnats lay eggs in wet topsoil, if you bottom water and maybe keep some cyprus mulch on top, prob have no worries.

ps. gnats do 'do things'...eggs hatch and larvae go to roots and feed on them.
 
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