I've had fungus gnats before, on occasion. They come in the potting soil sometimes (especially Miracle-Gro), and after the first watering, a few fly around for a week or so, then they're gone. Not this time. Since the soil I use now rarely has any gnats, I think they were in the mushroom compost, which I guess makes sense if they are fungus gnats. I never used it before, and may not again. It's been over 3 weeks, and there still is a SWARM in my cabinet. They're flying around everywhere, and there are dead ones all over the bottom. I don't know if they're a problem for the plants or not. They don't eat the plants, but I've seen some places that say the larvae eat the roots. Plus they're just annoying. So yesterday I got a sticky trap, like a paper towel roll that's sticky on the outside. I put it down near the soil yesterday, and today it was covered in gnats. I mean, almost solid. So now I'm imagining the buds acting like a whole bunch of sticky traps. So they've really got to go (I'm only in the 4th week of veg, so I have some time).
On the bright side, the sticky trap greatly reduced the number of those buggers flying around. But as I understand it, that's just a temporary solution if I don't kill the eggs/larvae in the soil. I hesitate to use chemicals, and I can't find any of the organic treatments around here. So I put a layer of perlite over the top of the soil in the bags. That's supposed to prevent the gnats from getting to the soil to lay their eggs. We'll see.
Interesting thing about this mushroom compost, which I'm trying for the first time. In the bottom third of my grow bags I mixed about half and half, compost and my soil mixture. I always mix up the soil and start watering it when I start my seedlings, so it has a couple of weeks for the biological activity to get going (organic grow) before I transplant into it. This time, the next day after I'd watered the bags for the first time, the surface of the soil was covered in a white fungus. Reminded me of when I used to grow mushrooms back in college. It was gone in a couple of days, but I've never seen anything like that before.
On the bright side, the sticky trap greatly reduced the number of those buggers flying around. But as I understand it, that's just a temporary solution if I don't kill the eggs/larvae in the soil. I hesitate to use chemicals, and I can't find any of the organic treatments around here. So I put a layer of perlite over the top of the soil in the bags. That's supposed to prevent the gnats from getting to the soil to lay their eggs. We'll see.
Interesting thing about this mushroom compost, which I'm trying for the first time. In the bottom third of my grow bags I mixed about half and half, compost and my soil mixture. I always mix up the soil and start watering it when I start my seedlings, so it has a couple of weeks for the biological activity to get going (organic grow) before I transplant into it. This time, the next day after I'd watered the bags for the first time, the surface of the soil was covered in a white fungus. Reminded me of when I used to grow mushrooms back in college. It was gone in a couple of days, but I've never seen anything like that before.
They eat little fuckers @ the source, their larvae.
