Keeping your plants healthy and beautiful
Fungus Gnats – YUK!!!
For those with indoor plants, ever have the pesky small black gnats that fly around? They are an annoying little critter, and emerge from your indoor plants.
They will not hurt your plants, your pets or even humans. They do indicate, however, that there’s a problem you have with your plants and that is you’re watering them too frequently. The Fungus Gnat loves moist, stagnant soil and thick layers of damp moss, along with decaying roots of the plants.
First and foremost, stop watering and remove the decorative plant moss (if you have any) around the base of the plant. The gnat lives in the top 2 inches of the soil, so replacing the old soil with fresh soil is good.
Bonide makes a product for those pesky gnats which you can sprinkle on the top of the soil and even mix it into the top 2 inches of the soil. The product kills the adult gnat which cannot produce any more eggs and then also kills the eggs in the soil.
You should see the gnats soon disappear as their life span is only for a day or two, by nature. Water your plants less frequently, too. Plants do much better if they are more on the dry side than the wet side as being too wet will also cause the roots to rot, thereby, leading to a slow death of your potted plant. You can purchase water meters at many of the nurseries which will assist you in knowing just how moist the soil is before you give your plant a drink.