How to get Rid of Fungus Gnats Naturally? Step by Step Guide

How to get rid of Fungus Gnats: There’s something refreshing about having a potted plant in your home. They respire life into a household and also add a nice colorful feel. The indoor plant brings a beautiful dose of nature indoors where you want it most, further serving us by purifying the air in our households.

Fungus gnats can rapidly become an issue if the invasion gets out of hand, often considered only a negligible indoor plant pest. Here’s how to get rid of fungus gnat invasions in your plants. From the article, you will also know how to recognize and prevent the growth of fungus gnats and ways you can employ to get rid of fungus gnats. Before we know how to get rid of fungus gnats first, we need to learn about fungus gnats.

What is Fungus Gnats?

Fungus gnats are a fruitfly–sized insect pest that chiefly disturbs internal houseplants. Fascinated by the moisture of potting soil, adult gnats lay their eggs (up to about 200) on a biological matter near the soil exterior. After about three days, the eggs hatch into larvae, which hideaway into the soil to feed on fungi and rotting plant material. Two weeks after that, adult gnats appear from the soil to repeat the process. Adults survive for about one week.

Fungus gnats are inoffensive to humans since they can’t bite and don’t cause sicknesses. They can be problematic for an indoor plant, however, when their population bursts and their larvae start to forage on plants’ roots. Fungus gnats may also disseminate Pythium, a cluster of plant pathogens that causes “damping off” in seedlings. To save your indoor plant from various problems you surely should know how to get rid of fungus gnats.

Once you have a fungus gnat invasion, using steady management and stoppage techniques is key to wind up it. Further down on this article, we’ve itemized a few of the finest ways to both get rid of fungus gnats and avert new gnats from evolving.

When Are You Most Expected to Find Fungus Gnats?

Annoyance problems with fungus gnat adults tend to be most visible during late fall and winter, for a twosome of reasons:

• An indoor plant that lives outside during warm months will normally start breeding fungus gnats. When these plants are taken inside, populations may upsurge due to the warmer temperatures found in households.
• People are inside more throughout the colder months, making it easier to notice an invasion.

CONTROL & INHIBITION

How to Get Rid of Fungus Gnats?

 

 

Getting rid of fungus gnats is all about steadiness. Trapping the adults is impartially easy, but because the adult population originates in cycles, you need to make definite that your traps are refreshed frequently. For the best results, use a grouping of the traps itemized here as well as the additional blocking methods listed in the following segment.

• Sticky Cards Trap

These traps comprise a yellow note card enclosed in sticky gum. They are most active when cut into small squares and positioned straight on top of the soil or attached to skewers just directly above the soil. Adult gnats will fly or sneak onto the card and get trapped. Fungus gnats are fascinated by the color yellow, so use the yellow sticky cards instead of the blue ones. Both are available at most hardware or garden shops, as well as online.

• Cider-Vinegar trap

Modest and effective, cider-vinegar traps comprise a shallow vessel with a small amount of apple cider vinegar, water, and liquid dish cleanser.

How to make a cider vinegar Trap?

Find a shallow vessel—a tuna can is seamless—and fill it with equivalent parts of water and apple cider vinegar. (The liquid must be at minimum ¼-inch deep.) Put a few drops of liquid dish cleanser into the blend and stir mildly. Position the trap close to the base of the infected plant or, preferably, inside the pot on the top layer of the soil. Check it every few days to change with new vinegar and water.

• Flypaper

Flypaper ribbons, such as those suspended in horse barns to catch open-air flies, can similarly be used to catch fungus gnats. Though, these traps are typically overkilled for gnats and can simply get trapped in things you don’t want them to stick to, such as household furniture, hair, plants, and so on.

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Don’t burden, there are easy—and natural—ways to stop and get rid of fungus gnats in soil.

• Make the Usual Habitat Inhospitable

This includes drying out their soil because fungus gnat larvae want moist soil. If you dry it out entirely earlier than your next watering, it will get rid of the gnats in the soil and depress new adults from laying their eggs.

How to get rid of Fungus gnats by using Soapy Water?

 

 

Take a mug of water and add a few drops of liquid dish soap. Spray the upper layer of the soil with this soapy water to ultimately kill the larvae. Redo this procedure again in a few days to guarantee that you have killed all of the larvae. It’s a simple and easy way to get rid of fungus gnats.

• Use Sand or Gravel to get rid of fungus gnats

Fungus gnats prefer to lay their eggs in the top inch layer of soil. Restoring that top-inch layer of soil with sand or gravel makes a dry environment and raids them of supplement-rich fungus to munch on. Without their required source of nutrients available, they will not desire to lay their eggs. Using sand or gravel can help you easily get rid of fungus gnats from the soil.

• How to get rid of Fungus Gnats by throwing away the Top Layer of soil:

The eggs can still brew. Allow them to brew outdoor rather than anywhere in your home. You ought not just to shift your pests from one section of the house to another.

By applying all of these steps, you can certainly control and get rid of fungus gnats.

How to Prevent Fungus Gnats?

You can employ a few easy steps to prevent the infestation of fungus gnats in the very first stage. Down there are a few strategies that can help you to stop the infestation from entering your life in the first place…

• Don’t Drench Your Houseplants with extra water

Not either fungus gnats or their larvae can endure in dehydrated soil, so allow your to dry out entirely between watering soil as much as possible.

• Water from the Bottommost

This will help the surface layer of the soil (where the gnats lay their eggs) to stay dry while keeping your plants hydrous and pleased.

• Store Additional Potting Soil in an Airlock Container

If you store your potting soil in the bag it originates in, fungus gnats can effortlessly get in and lay their eggs. However, the eggs need ventilation to survive, so airlock vessels or containers like buckets with tight-fitting covers will keep gnat larvae inlet.

Mosquito dunks (with helpful bacteria): Mosquito dunks are accustomed to keep mosquito larvae from populating springs, animal troughs, fish pools, and other small water bodies. The product comprises a dehydrated capsule containing a sort of bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies isrealensis. This advantageous bacterium poisons and kills the larvae of airborne insects, counting mosquitoes, fruit flies, and fungus gnats.

• To employ mosquito dunks:

Fill up a gallon container (or watering can) with fresh water and chuck in a mosquito dunk. It is a very decent idea to pause up the dunk a bit before employing it in the water, or you can delay for it to unstiffen before disrupting it separately. Allow the dunk to steep in the water for as long as possible (at least one night), then eradicate it from the water (the dunk can be recycled) and apply this water for fungus gnat–infected plants. The bacteria will have mooched into the water and intent to infect and kill any larvae that come into close contact with it in the soil. Repeat this procedure every single time you water your plants for at least a few months.

Final Thoughts: How to Get Rid of Fungus Gnats

Expectantly, the said ideas give you an overall idea about how to get rid of fungus gnats. Any method you use works efficiently to get rid of fungus gnats and does not cause harm to your plants and environment. Once you know how to get rid of fungus gnats it will restore the appropriate environment for your household plants.