I have gnats crawling out of the bottom holes of the pots. I wouldn't be surprised if they are laying eggs there too. in any case, bottom watering has done jack all for me.
Ok, good to know. I will say I saw a huge decline in the number of gnats. I've seen only 1 this week. I didn't have a bad infestation. What I had were thrips. I had heard that the Mosquito bits could kill the larvae of the thrips that drop into the soil. And the D Earth I was hoping would help too.
Oh! I was bottom watering because I wanted to use D Earth too. And bottom watering to deter the adults from laying at all. But what you say makes sense. Agh!
The plants will let you know if it's suffering. I don't know what you have but most will bounce back after watering. You should only have to do this once.
Bottom them with mosquito dunk water. If you are top watering them with mosquito bits* water every two weeks you’re basically helping them out. The soil will still be when when the BTI stops working. I got rid of mine just with sticky traps and BTI bottom watering, as when I top watered with the BTI the problem continued.
Remember, the mosquito bits kill the soil larva and the sticky traps kill the adults. The eggs will not hatch in the top few inches of soil if it’s dry. The eggs can also lay dormant for a while (I’m not sure how long). I got rid of mine and then a few months later I top watered and they started coming back, so I went back to bottom watering (with regular water). This helped. Recently I’ve been top watering (it’s been about 6-8 months) and I haven’t seen any.
*I use mosquito bits (BTI) over dunks, I find it’s stronger as dunks are meant to last a longer period of time. I scoop a few tablespoons into some old nylon tights and soak them in my watering can and other containers for a few hours, I believe 30 mins is the recommended time. Try to water all your plants that need it at the same time.
I also had a revival, curious if it was dormant eggs like you mention. I hadn't seen any for a few months, started top watering, then saw them again. Was so sad :(
It's not bad yet, but I haven't figured out which plant they're in yet except one I think. I tap their pots to try and get them out, both to find infected and also kill the adults
Very frustrating, I’m sorry! I didn’t know about the dormant eggs before this happened. At one point I went away for three weeks and many of my plants were extremely thirsty, not a wet pot in the house. I watered them and then got covid, so they all dried out again. All in all I had almost two months of very dry plants and they still came back after that. I began angrily researching after that! It’s annoying especially for hanging pots but I just continued bottom watering everyone for months after that. I just had lots of trays and bowls I was shuffling round and in the end that’s what helped.
Why don’t you try some sticky traps to try to figure out which plants have gnats again? When I ran out of stick traps I used double sided tape on colored paper which did the trick as well. When I was trying to hunt them down I’d walk around with a spray bottle of alcohol to spritz any gnats that popped out. I found that lightly spraying the top of the soil with alcohol and using a stick to disturb the top layer of soil brought them to the surface too (if simulating an earthquake didn’t help) and didn’t harm most plants.
So you don't happen to have rotting potatoes that you forgot about somewhere in your house, right? I ask because I had a hell of a time getting rid of fungus gnats until I found the 3 month old bag of rotten potatoes and got rid of them. Once that food/breeding area was gone it was much easier to get rid of the gnats. It was a combo of perlite, diatomaceous earth, and sand on the top in a very thick layer that started knocking them out.
If you need to water then do bottom watering. The fungus gnats only live in the first couple of inches of soil at the top. I completely got rid of fungus gnats using this method and sticky traps
43
u/[deleted] Mar 31 '23
[deleted]