Cooking soil has fungus gnats everywhere! Best course of action?

So one of the amendments used was some local mushroom compost from a nursery around the corner... I'm pretty sure it's the source of my gnats (and a few beetles); That or the other locally sourced compost w/ biochar from a big box store...

Everything else isn't really suspect (the FFoF and JustRite soil bags had sat in a barn for 2 winters... it had zero moisture so I don't think any critters survived 2 rounds of summer/winter in a barn)...

So without killing the living goodness I'm trying to have here, what would you do? I have SM-90 but the jury is out from what I've read as to whether it kills benies or mycos...

I dumped extra diatomaceous earth I had on hand all over the top of the mound which is still sitting in a wheelbarrow... I already had some mixed in, so I do worry about any 'overdone' threshold for DE...

No way I bring that gnat ridden soil into my room as it stands.... I'll kill things to a point of sterile and start-over before doing that...

Well as one way of addressing things, I added the Neem Seed meal I had ordered and mixed things up as well as finally adding more components I had lying around (a dash of pavers sand, some more chunky perlite, some bark fines, a dash or two of turface and the left over compost that was probably part of the source of the gnats and another cuo or so more of the crab meal for the chitin)...

I'm assuming I'll need to let things 'cook' another week or two having added the Neem meal... correct? And is there more I can do to combat the gnats?

NewGrower2011 said:

Well as one way of addressing things, I added the Neem Seed meal I had ordered and mixed things up as well as finally adding more components I had lying around (a dash of pavers sand, some more chunky perlite, some bark fines, a dash or two of turface and the left over compost that was probably part of the source of the gnats and another cuo or so more of the crab meal for the chitin)...

I'm assuming I'll need to let things 'cook' another week or two having added the Neem meal... correct? And is there more I can do to combat the gnats?

Click to expand...

Sounds like you on the right track with crab. Neem and de.

I figure I'll give it a day or so since I'm assuming it needs to 're-cook' a tad. If not I'm going to give it a hardy peroxide/SM-90 dose and then once pests are gone brew some tea again...

I already treated once initially with a tea to kick start things, I'm assuming I don't want to do as hardy of a tea and encounter some form of build-up... In this next tea I just want to get the living ecology re-established... What should I use in a tea just for biological activity?

Is that EM-1 stuff all it's claimed to be if I want to just get the biology rebooted?

Diatomaceous earth...Cinnamon...Mosquito dunks in watering can...Gnatrol....dry top layer of soil.

Mosquito dunks are available everywhere now.Very cool.

Damn. I forgot all about those dunks. I even have some on hand!