How To Kill Fungus Gnats

hillbill said:

Fungus gnats don’t bother me as long as the population is controlled and no harm is being done. I compost and now have a worm farm, I have a small bog garden and live in the woods. I grow in my own organic mix and seems like fungus gnats are gonna be around.

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How do you control the population? I had like 50+ lining my grow room ceiling at one time. Vacuumed them up then went out to buy some bug nukes.

Consistent use of dunks ground up in mix and top dressed and watered in and watering with Neem solution and spraying surface of mix with Neem. Occasionally I use pyrethrins sprayed on surface. As surface dries I sometimes dust with diatomaceous earth. I make it uncomfortable and difficult for them. These gnats can come in with any new mix or castings or peat or compost. Let the surface get quite dry between waterings.

I just bought some Dunks and Nematodes today

mipro84 said:

Maybe a noobish question but whats is DE? thnx

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diatomaceous earth

Using hay as a mulch created more adults but all of the larvy seemed to collect just under the hay on the very top surface of coco. I think they eat the decaying hay.. because once removing it as a counter they all dug into the coco instead. Not as many larva were in view like you could see with lifting up the hay layer but they were definitely still in the coco. Many would get washed up to the surface when watering. If eating hay is not the case and they were eating roots, then it's likely they were content eating roots that were at surface level only made possible by having the hay there. In other words giving them bait.

I think maybe a solution is to use hay mulch to feed the larva at the surface level but also top dress some worm casting every week to add nematodes. The flying adults would be left alone to keep putting larva into the soil, if the nema in the castings have a good supply of larva then that would feed the plant, turning a negative to positive?. I may have got the wrong idea from info read.

bacillus thuringiensis in your water and an inch of sand or perlite over the soil surface