Controlling fungus gnats can be done easily. Read on and know how to get rid of these pests for good.
How to Get Rid of the Adult Fungus Gnats
Fungus gnats have a strange attraction to the colour yellow, like most tiny flying insects do. This is why people have thought of manufacturing yellow sticky cards intended to trap these pests. These can be readily available at your local garden shop. Yellow sticky tape also works. Just place some of these sticky cards or tapes next to your infected house plants. After a few days, you’ll be surprised on how many gnats these things caught.
Vinegar is a good alternative since these flies are also attracted to the smell of vinegar. Just pour some vinegar into a small jar and place it underneath your infected plants. They will fly into the cup or jar and will get trapped. To make this strategy more effective, try adding liquid into your jar of vinegar. The flies will get stuck in the soap and will be unable to fly out.
How to Kill the Larvae
If you only trapped just a few adult flies, most likely, there are a significant number of larvae in you’re the soil. If this is the case, use potato to trap the larvae. Just cut a few slices of potato of about one inch in width and length and about half an inch in thickness. Burry the slices of potato into the soil where infected plants are grown and leave them there for four to eight hours. Larvae love potato. When they begin to consume the potato slices, remove them and count how many larvae you’ve trapped. This will give you an idea on how severe the infestation is.
Another smart way of getting rid of them is to stop watering your plants for a couple of days and allowing the top layer of the soil to totally dry up. Larvae will not develop in parched soil, although they can endure such dry condition by delaying their development. Do not worry about killing your plant. Most plants can survive a couple of days without water.
When your top soil is parched, mix one part of hydrogen peroxide (or H2o2, 3% solution) with four parts water. See to it that you get the pure H2O2 without chemical additives. With your mixture, water your plants just like how you normally do. See to it that you fully cover the top layer of your soil. You will notice a fizzing sound after a couple of minutes. Don’t worry because this is completely normal. Contact with the hydrogen peroxide is fatal for these larvae. Then the fizzing will stop after a couple more minutes and the solution will turn into oxygen molecules and water molecules (which are beneficial for plants.) If the problem is severe before you could do anything about it, consider fungus gnat control products.