Welcome to the Growery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
|
 Some of these posts are very old and might contain outdated information. You may wish to search for newer posts instead.
|
 snuffy
Stranger
Registered: 03/01/12
Posts: 1
Last seen: 12 years, 9 months
|
 Fungus Gnats 
#611121 - 03/01/12 11:05 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Found a great, non toxic solution to fungus gnat problems. I have a garbage can of soil "cooking" outside for my veggie garden. I'm basically letting the the mycorrhiza establish itself for a month before use in the garden. I purchased Miracle Gro Organic soil, which is notorious for containing fungus gnats. Sure enough, after two days in the sun they were swarming the soil. Now, I know that naturaly the soil will dry out enough in a month to prevent adults from laying eggs and prevent larvae from emerging from the soil as adults, effectively ending the life cycle. But I wanted to do a little experiment to see if I could kill them off before then without using any of the commonly recommended remedies.
I had a white sage smudge stick that releases a ton of smoke when smoldering and decided I may be able to suffocate them with the smoke. I light the smudge stick and got it really fired up so it was billowing smoke. I stuck the stick in the soil and put the lid on the trash can and waited about 30 minutes. Obviously the smudge stick ran out of oxygen after a few minutes, but I wanted to saturate the available space in the can with smoke long enough to kill those little fuckers. I removed the lid, and half expected to see a bunch of gnats still flying around. I did not see any. Not one gnat. It's now a week later and I have been checking the soil everyday. I have seen maybe one or two a day. Within a week or so, the top layers of soild should be dry enought to end their life cycle completely.
I think this could be easily adapted for anybody with indoor plants in pots by tying a bag or pillow case over the affected plant and using the smudge stick trick. Give it a shot and post your results in this thread. I want to verify this wasn't a fluke or that it is just as effective indoors as it is outside.
|
RasJeph
Psycho Pete
Registered: 01/14/09
Posts: 11,657
Loc: Bumfuckt Egypt
Last seen: 1 year, 1 month
|
Re: Fungus Gnats [Re: snuffy]
#611174 - 03/01/12 06:30 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
|
|
the gnats are almost my friends at this point. they come hang out for a week or so, and then I don't see them until my next grow lol.
interesting discovery there. id be waaaay too nervous to try with a plant though.
--------------------
Of course it's happening inside your head.
Why should that mean it isn't real?
| |
|
|
|
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Edit 
Reply 
