Ich habe vor ungefähr zwei Monaten (nie wieder) Miracle-Gro-Boden bestellt, eine meiner Pflanzen und jetzt-BAM-überall aufzutragen. Ich habe alles ausprobiert und nichts funktioniert. Anbringen von Screenshots der Produkte, die ich bereits verwendet habe.
Hier ist, was ich bisher gemacht habe: 1. Zimtabstaub auf alle meine Pflanzen + Captain Jacks Neemöl -Spray → Kein Glück. 2. 1: 4 Wasserstoffperoxid Einweichen → hat nicht geholfen. 3. Klebrige Fallen (wöchentlich ersetzen) → Sie füllen sich wie verrückt, aber die Mücken kommen immer wieder. 4. • Den gleichen Dunk wiederverwendet, lassen Sie es 2 Wochen lang sitzen und dann wieder bewässert. • Überprüfen Sie die Fallen und sie sind voll – mehr als je zuvor! 5. gerade Live -Nematoden bestellt (Marke beigefügt). Weiß jemand, wie man diese richtig benutzt?
Was mache ich jetzt ?! – Wenn ich mich umtrieb, wie kann ich das wieder aufnehmen? Ich habe mikrowastrierende Boden gehört? Verwendung von Sand auf dem Boden? – Gibt es noch etwas, das tatsächlich funktionieren wird?
Ich verliere meinen Verstand darüber – bitte helfen Sie, bevor ich meine Pflanzen (oder mich selbst) aus dem Fenster werfe. Ich habe fast jeden Beitrag zu diesem Reddit gelesen, der sich mit Gnats bezieht, aber bitte lassen Sie mich wissen, ob mir etwas fehlt.
Von: Chotuchigg
42 Comments
Your soil is crazy dense. Fix that. Should help with the gnats. Also when I get the on occasion I spray the soil and them with rubbing alcohol
https://preview.redd.it/vbdkuuygowle1.jpeg?width=702&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f142d192dd1a7f8c3db4945979e738d4c659b9e6
This will help. And bottom water your plants
Get horticultural sand. Put a layer about 3/4 of an inch thick over the top soil. And only bottom water when the roots are dry.
Change your soil to a better draining soil and start bottom watering! As for dealing with current infestation I’m not sure
Use more porous soil, water from the bottom or cover the top. Have you considered getting a plant that eats gnats? Pinguicula do
Azomax
I watered with a hydrogen peroxide mix and also let the plant dry out fully. I’ve also seen people bring plants home from box stores and wash them entirely roots incl and put them in new soil, never tried it myself, but I wish you the best of luck! fungus gnats are my mortal enemy
edit to add, you could also try a layer of diatomaceous earth on top of your soil! it will kill them by giving them a ton of tiny cuts and they dehydrate and die. make sure to only bottom water your plants too.
I also used a hydrogen peroxide (1 c peroxide to 4 c water) drench as a last resort, then mosquito bits. It does kill any beneficial guys as well as the gnat larvae, tho.
Keep up with the BTI. I had a bad outbreak (which also came from miracle gro potting soil). It takes a few months to really wipe them out and keep using the sticky traps until they are under control.
I keep a 5 gal jug w/ spigot full of mosquito dunks to fill my watering can from.
Stop all watering for a few weeks. Looks like you’ve got a Sago and maybe a ponytail and they’re both hearty enough to deal with no water for a while. I have a few hundred plants and every time I start to see fungus gnats my first move it to stop watering everything right away except for the most thirsty plants. When I start to water again they get a mixture with mosquito bits for a few weeks and that does the trick. But you have to let them dry out to help interrupt the life cycle. That soil is way too wet to create a hostile environment for the little buggers.
Add a pingulata
I’ve had really really good results with Bonide Systemic Houseplant Insect Control. They are granules you sprinkle onto the soil and water in and it kills the gnats and their eggs. I had thousands of them Infest my all of plants one summer and this is the only thing that killed them for good. Mosquito dunk tea is good too but I swear by bonide.
You have a ton of other suggestions on here but I was just reading about putting coffee grounds on top of the soil. If your a coffee drinker then that would be something you already have on hand.
My brother works at a greenhouse and bright home some tulips for me. I started noticing little flies everywhere. Looked up and googled it what they were and am hoping they didn’t imayge my other plants. Lol luckily most of mine are succulents so don’t have to worry about most soil
Cinnamon is working well for me so far.
change out the soil for something lighter. maybe mix in orchid bark or sand. those only need water once e dry 1-2 weeks. they hold water in their big root ball so their soil can be dry
I’ve successfully treated my gnat infestation with Bonide systemic granules. Did not affect the plants negatively and the gnats are almost entirely gone. I treated almost all of my plants at the same time.
Sticky traps also helped me figure out which plants were more prone to infestation. One plant in particular (peace lily) still had gnats after the first application. Quarantined it and applied a second treatment 👍
I would highly recommend diatomaceous earth! Around my town, it gets 120° in the summer, lowest humidity you’ll ever see all year round, 0%, and I keep my grow room at 30-40%, so I have had a WAR with these gnats. If you can, what I do is if you have like a closet with a door, put the plants in there together, and just go buckwild with the duster. On the plants, in the air, against the walls, (great, now it sounds sexual…) and close the door and let it settle for 30 min to an hour, I guarantee your gnat problems will go away soon. I use diatomaceous earth like that, I put straight 3% peroxide in the soil with certain plants, if not I go 3 H2O 1 h2o2 mix, be careful not to get it on leaves, it will burn them! The cinnamon doesn’t affect my gnats unless they land in a pile of it. Try to keep the topsoil relatively dry, you could use sand for that, it would work well. Maybe a quarter inch to half inch on top. The pots I have that are 1 p sand 2 p organic don’t have any gnats in them, but my most organic pots do.
Get a couple pinguicula’s and become a savage gardener. They’re a nice addition to the collection and will take care of your pest problem.
Mosquito bits and some Zevo flying insect traps works for me.
i’ll add in that if you call an exterminator about fungus gnats they usually tell you that they have a main source that they’re living in!! i would say getting rid of the plant in the 2nd picture that’s completely rotted might be a good start!!
I’ve had success mixing vegetable oil with a small amount of dish soap + water (BIG shake) and then heavily spraying the top of the soil every few days – NOT the leaves. The gnats breathe through holes in their body and the oil + soap suffocate them. Don’t use a soap that will kill your soil microbiome if you care about that more than killing the gnats.
I did it every 2-3 days for a couple weeks and used yellow sticky traps to mitigate after. I might start watering with mosquito dunk water if it gets crazy again.
[this is all you need – bonide, keep up with yellow traps, keep soil dry, and top with a layer of perlite](https://a.co/d/3eutet8)
I am guessing that there is a secondary infestation in your place that’s repopulating your planters. Check your compost bin if you have one and if that’s it, stop composting for a couple months while you treat the plants.
BTI will work, but it’s a live product. Yours might be dead. I’d buy it again, but get the bits form this time, and get it from a reliable retailer (not amazon). You can just sprinkle the bits directly onto the soil, the dunks are for large water containers like a rain barrel.
Your local garden center probably carries it. Or a garden supply website, if going to a local store is an issue.
I would cancel those nematodes if you also ordered them from Amazon, they’re probably dead too. They don’t have adequate climate control in their supply chain.
I swear by mosquito bits tea….but you have to do it for a few weeks to see them completely gone, then when they are gone you do the tea still but skip around on your waterings…you don’t need to do it everytime after that but it’s good to still do it to keep them gone!! I love it!! I never see those pesky things and never have to use ugly traps!!!!
And I use the dunks, put a piece in a mesh bag and drop it water to make a tea…I don’t want that stuff all over my soil, it gets moldy sometimes, and it’s just not pretty!!
Beneficial Nematodes are the correct answer in this situation.
Diatomaceous Earth will do if you have no pets and don’t mind reapplying routinely
Tip: I buy my dirt/soil long in advance of needing it so I can make sure it’s dried out and healthy before I ever put it towards my plants, then I make my soil blend for the plant(s) I’m going to use the soil in. Buying soil that is moist and using it immediately is usually the worst mistake you could make when repotting a plant.
Something a lot of people miss is your drains. Fungus gnats love to breed in damp places. Make sure to pour a little bleach down your drains every night to prevent eggs from hatching.
Lots of people already giving good advice, especially using mosquito bits instead of dunks and using exclusively treated water to water ALL plants EVERY time. I have a rotation of empty gallon jugs that I use to treat and water my plants. Soak once with treated water and then bottom water for future.
The stickies do help and you can get cheaper sheets that you can cut to size on Amazon or EBay. I usually stick a a piece small piece on the inside 2” of my planters. Every planter gets 1-2 pieces and it isn’t as unsightly as the giant yellow pieces.
Dimitation Earth.
Get a big bucket, fill it so there’s enough that the plant is submerged, throw some castille soap or neem oil in and let it sit for 15 min or so. Take it out and let it dry…gnats gone bye-bye! 🤣
Mosquito bits help, but mosquito bits will positively erradicate them.
1) Nematodes to get rid of the existing problem.
2) Boil all new compost before use to kill eggs and larvae.
I just spray my plants with fly spray, works excellent on cycads too and gets rid of cycad moths 😇
Let the soil dry out between waterings. I use diatomaceous earth as well
Mosquito dunks work very well
The Miracle-Gro soil isn’t the problem on its own—actually I have a bag of it that’s like 3 years old and I’ve only used about half of it and it has remained gnat-free, whereas I’ve brought other bags home, various brands, and opened it to get a cloud of gnats flying out.
It is critical to know that outside of systemic insecticides, the reliable gnat-killers that kill the larvae won’t do anything to the adults, and the things that kill the adults won’t do anything to the larvae. So:
***You MUST learn about the fungus gnat life and reproductive cycle and how they relate to getting rid of them. [Here’s one source](https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7448.html). And they reproduce pretty quickly. So you have to be very diligent in your timing of the adult treatments and the larvae treatments. I’ve never done much for adults beyond sticky traps and catching them—the main thing was being mindful of the time after each treatment so that you can prevent the next generation from emerging. It won’t happen all at once. But if you stay on top of it, you will reduce each generation significantly until they’re gone.
It’ll take time. I don’t recall anymore exactly how long it took me to get them under control, but I spent a while flailing and then once I learned about the life cycle and how to work with that, it still probably took a few months.
Those Gus gnats dont seem very fun at all
I have been there! I also got stick traps for my windows. There’s special fly traps for windows.
Start bottom watering.
Keep the vacuum handy and regularly suck up those lil mothers (this made a huge difference).
Glad you are getting nematodes(I use Nematode Knights brand). You sprinkle some on then water as they travel on the water droplets.
My friend said putting sand on the surface also stops them.
Hang in there!
Fungal gnats LOVE peat based potting mixes. You need to change out the soil.
When I stopped using peat mixes for seed starting, my seedling survival rate went way up.
I’ve noticed since I changed my peat-bound houseplants to peat free, I haven’t had an issue with the gnats like I used to in those pots.
Peat free can be challenging to find in the USA but not impossible. One all purpose one, Rosy Soil, I’ve been using for about a year now with no complaints. There can be some good mixes found on sites for orchid growers too.
I switched from soil to Earth Wind and Plants’ soil free potting mix. It was the only thing that worked. No soil, no gnats.
I’m lazy and cheap, so I use what I have. It’s easy to make vinegar traps. Basically small soda bottles or similar with nail sized holes punched in the caps. Inside I add vinegar, sugar, and a few drops of dawn (or similar) dish soap.
I refresh these once in a while. Usually by adding a bit more sugar and checking to see if the dish soap is working (breaks the surface tension of the liquid so the gnats drown). The numbers will dwindle down in a week or two, and if you leave them out it catches any stray ones so it’s harder for an infestation to take off.
Typically I have a couple small bottles by the plants (only have one freestanding shelf of plants), and one in the kitchen by the sink. You can decorate them so they look nice if you want.
They eat mold or whatever is in the soil, which is caused by too much moisture. Bottom watering helps keep the surface dry and discourages adults from laying eggs.
Potting mixes seem geared towards holding onto moisture, and when plants have too much moisture the roots rot and can’t take up water so it may look like they’re being underwatered. Also plants you buy in the store and mixes tend to have fungus gnat eggs in them so when you start watering the plants it may create favorable conditions for them
I quarantine any new plants in another room then add them to my collection after they seem clear of bugs.
You can change the potting mix or water less.