Okay, I’ve googled to a fare thee well, and can’t find anything to corroborate my tale of woe.
Supposedly fungus gnats and fruit flies can’t/won’t bite. I’m here to tell you, they DO. Either that or I’ve got some mysterious, heretofore undiscovered variety of houseplant gnats.
I’ve been trying to get rid of the little horrors by using all of the natural “green” methods, not watering my plants until they’re half dead, using the soapy water spray method on the leaves, diatomaceous earth, all that rot. I finally couldn’t take it anymore, bought plant pest killer and went around to all of my houseplants spraying them down (and cackling madly at the thought of gnat Armageddon).
These little pests are constantly annoying me, and I’ve often felt a tiny, but sharp pain and then looked down to see one of these little gnats just flitting off, or somewhere in the vicinity. They don’t leave marks, so no, it’s not bedbugs, or fleas.
Plus, the stupid things frequently fly up my nose. Good grief.
What the devil is going on? darned beasts, mutter mutter…
Maybe you’re allergic to something else the little horrors might be doing when they land…
My fungus gnat tale of woe: I had a Chia Pet in college. One day, after a recent planting, I noticed that the top had gotten rather light in color. On closer inspection, I found that it was covered in tiny, wriggling larvae. (I’m pretty sure they were fungus gnats…I really didn’t spend that long examining them before I plunged the Chia Pet into a strong bleach solution.)
I recently returned from a field job where there were lots of some sort of outdoor gnat, and they did the same thing (flew up your nose, and in your eyes and we ended up swallowing a few as well). It was pretty chilly, so we guessed it was the warmth they were attracted to.
The difference is that the outdoor ones never bit or anything. It is possible I’m allergic to something they’re doing, I have no idea. The pest poison seems to be helping.
I’m not getting bit, but I’m getting annoyed as hell – can’t figure out why there’s such a godawful infestation of them this year. It’s not like I’ve suddenly started overwatering my plants or something.
Just ordered some of the yellow sticky traps – can’t wait till they get here.
I love 'em. They’re not only effective, they’re immensely satisfying – you can see all those tiny little gnat corpses gradually covering the entire surface.
Make sure you pour out any standing water from the base of the plant pots a few minutes after you water; that can apparently provide enough moisture to harbor them.
We wound up buying a large cylinder of mosquito granules (bacillus thuringiensis, I think it’s the BT Israeliensis variety) and dumping them in some of the pots, also a thick layer of decorative sand on the soil surface helped keep the newly-hatched critters from escaping. That, plus deliberately underwatering (as someone else said: wait until they’re half dead) finally got the problem down to nearly nothing. I still see them around very rarely.
We did lose some plants entirely due to the non-watering. As I understand it, the gnats themselves are otherwise pretty harmless unless you’ve got a plant that is otherwise in distress.
Choke! Snort! Oh hell yeah, I love that part too. I think that Fred Meyer actually carries them, so I don’t have to order and wait for them to arrive…muaaah haha.
I Love the sand idea too, I never thought of a substitute for the diatomaceous earth.
I made myself little clay stands for my yellow sticky traps so I don’t have to always have them stuck in something - I just took a blob of clay and formed it into something that kind of resembles a huge Hershey’s Kiss, with the sticky stick stuck in the top.
Gnatrol is the only thing that got rid of them forever for me. The sticky traps work fine, they will kill most of the adults, but the life cycle will continue. Gnatrol is a variant of BT, a bacteria that kills the fungus gnat larvae. You mix it with water and soak your plants with it every 3 days for a couple weeks.
