Fruit Flies in your plants or….FUNGUS GNATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s what happens:

I bring some plants inside for the Winter. Over the course of the Winter more and more little bugs are flying around the plants. Especially when I water the plants the bugs come flying out.

I figure they are Fruit Flies, so I make a fruit-fly trap. You know, the kind where you cut the top off of a plastic bottle, which forms a funnel. You turn the…oh heck, here’s a picture of one:

So I put fruit juice in the bottle. No flies. Then I try a piece of banana. No flies. Then I try wine.

Still no flies.

That’s because they are NOT FRUIT FLIES. They are Fungus Gnats.

Fungus Gnats like wet soil. I have ferns and some other plants that like damp soil. I figured that I must have a few dozen flies in my plants. Finally, I hang up a pest strip. This sticky fly catching strip has no chemicals or pesticides in it. It’s just sticky.

Wow, was I surprised. In a few weeks it caught over a thousand little Fungus Gnats. Crazy, huh?

I also read that spraying 3% Hydrogen Peroxide onto the topsoil of the plant will kill off some of the gnats, so I also have done that a few times.

The gnats love wet soil so they aren’t usually a problem in African Violets, which do better if they dry out a bit between waterings.

It’s in my genetic code to raise African Violets.

Here’s a little cold-water fish tank on my plant shelf. I’m raising the baby Rosy-red Minnows in here until the pond thaws in Spring, if that ever happens.