Soil Gnats

Fooleeze

Looking for a little assistance for eliminating soil gnats (I belive that's what they are commonly referred to as). The pesky little gnats that constantly fly around my plants indoors.

I've recently put a piece of fly-paper across the shelf that holds a lot of my trees. Not only did it catch the gnats, but it proved to me how bad my problem really is!!! In a period of about 48 hours I had collected 75 + gnats on the fly paper!!! NASTY!!!

I know catching them will only hide the problem, which leads to my question: How do I kill them at the source? Does their larvae live in the soil? How can I get rid of them? I've heard a bit about Neem Oil, is this a viable solution? They're really 'bugging' me, so any help would be sincerely appreciated. Thanks!

Fooleeze
(Todd)

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mfp1028

Do the nats look like little black fruitfly's?
my soil is infested with little white worms (about 3 millimeters long) with tiny black heads. I drowned the bumpkins on my smaller plants but i would rather treat them with some type of nasty, inorganic, environmentally unfriendly, poisonous, gruesome death producing chemical.
help us dr. b and tell us if those crazy critters are gonna eat our plants.(what else could they possibly want, and who would possibly live in bonsai soil?)
wish me luck,
I'm gonna try the battery acid first.
mp

mfp1028

heres a pic of the little soil boogers,
this one was about three times as large as the others though.(it was about 1 millimeter thick and 5 millimeters long and he is still pressed against the glass of my scanner... )
sorry i dont know how to attach the image directly to the post.
Its alright, only everybody else does it that way.

Attached Images

worm.bmp (63.6 KB, 113 views)

TreeBay

Hi there.

I asked Moni for her input on the gnat situation. I actually like the idea of the fly paper. Although they do no harm as flies, If you can remove the adults it will have an impact on the offspring population by reducing the egg laying potential.

P.S. If you attach your photo files as jpegs, they will appear right in-line with the image. I think also, that windows bmps cannot be opened by some Mac users, so there's another reason.

Regards,

Matt

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Moni

Your instincts on the fly paper were pretty good. Yes, the larvae live in the soil and disrupt the roots of the plants. But if you catch most of them on the paper, you stop the whole process on the adult end. No adults, no larvae. Yellow stickie traps sold as white fly traps work even better.
The larvae live in the top 1 inch of soil, so removing that and replacing it with new soil will also help.
And....let the soil dry out a bit. They LOVE moist soil. It is their reason for being.
As for nuking them (I'm grinning now), there are some things you can do. Pyrethrums work pretty well on the adults, as do insecticidal soaps. If you want to nuke the larvae, I would turn to BT (bacillus thuringiensis) that is made specifically for fungus gnat larvae. There are 3 different kinds of BT that deal with different insects. You need to get BT israelensis and water the solution into the soil.
There also are some nematodes that have been used quite successfully on fungus gnat larvae but I am not yet informed enough on them to give advice on their use.
Moni

mfp1028

thanx for the advice.
I am putting my trees in the microwave as we speak.

Fooleeze

Just a quick update on my soil Gnats. . . I put up the fly paper, and caught about a million of the little brats. (I counted). There are a lot less flying around now, but I still see them from time to time. I'm hoping their population will dwindle rapidly!

Moni

If you are just going to go the sticky trap route, I applaud you. I would, however, switch to yellow sticky traps. The gnats are attracted to the color yellow more than any other color, so your trapping rate would go up. It does take a bit longer to stop the infestation if you attack only one part of the cycle but it does usually work. Good for you. Plus, those traps have to be close to the surface of the soil the gnats are infesting.
Moni

Fooleeze

I actually am using the yellow sticky traps, and I believe they work quite well. To make sure we're on the same page, they're the little tubes of rolled up sticky paper that you unroll into a (approx) two foot long strand of gooey sticky paper. Hang it up, and voila!

Pre-sticky traps I would see at least 10 - 15 of the little snots flying around my group of plants. Post-sticky traps I might see 1 or 2. Amen.

I was looking for other options to attack the larvae, but never really came up with a good one, so sticky traps it is! And as long as it's working, I'm happy.