Control fungus gnats // Cinnamon vs. mosquito bits vs. sticky traps vs. diatomaceous earth

hey everyone welcome to my little corner of the universe my balcony garden which is actually right behind me behind that window my name is Nicole glass I'm a photographer a writer and I recently decided to start a balcony garden now I find myself dreaming of having like a huge farm but for now my balcony garden is gonna have to do anyways so shortly after starting my balcony garden I noticed these little black flies that were flying around they were flying all around my face they were just everywhere and I didn't know what they were and I kind of just assumed that they were gnats you know or fruit flies or something like that so in the past when I've had fruit flies I have put out like a potion which basically consisted of apple cider vinegar and dish soap and I would put that in a mason jar and the fruit flies would kind of just get attracted to that and fall in and drowned but I tried doing that and it didn't work so I did some research these are not normal gnats and I figured out that I had an infestation of fungus gnats and yes that sounds pretty unpleasant and it kind of is fungus gnats are small flies that infest soil potting mix other container media and other sources of organic decomposition their larvae primarily feed on fungi and organic matter in soil but also to roots and can be a problem in greenhouses nurseries potted plants and interior plant scapes in my case the fungus gnats were born in the soil of vegetable plants like my tomato plants and different herbs and they were not easy to get rid of so since I plan to eat what I'm growing I definitely didn't want to put anything into the soil that wasn't organic so I did a lot of extensive research to try to figure out how I can kill these fungus gnats without you know ruining my food with chemicals and I did hours of research I watched every freaking video on the internet about fungus gnats I read everything that I could about them I bought and I tried almost every organic solution that I could so let's dive in and see what worked for me and what didn't work and there's a lot that didn't work number one drying out the soil and covering it with cinnamon which have some cinnamon sticks right here fungus gnats apparently hate the smell of cinnamon or so I read cinnamon apparently also gets rid of the fungus in dirt which fungus gnat larvae need so anyways before I went out and bought any of the other you know fungus net remedies or whatever you want to call it I tried putting cinnamon on the soil and this didn't work despite the fact that my soil smelled like cinnamon the fungus gnats kept emerging from the soil which means they were continuing to be born so it didn't really stop them the other thing I did here is I tried to dry out the soil as much as I could because fungus gnats need moist soil in order to lay their eggs and keep in mind one fungus gnat can lay up to 300 eggs which is a ridiculous amount but I realized that this wasn't something I could really do for a long time because my vegetable plants needed moist soil and if I were to dry out the soil I would also kill the vegetable plants so dry soil and cinnamon was not a method that worked for me number two potato slices the second thing I tried to do is put a bunch of potato slices on top of the soil apparently if you put potato slices on soil it will attract fungus gnat larvae that are going to start eating the potato slices after leaving the potato slices on the soil for a while the larvae will apparently go into the slices and at that point you can just pick up the slices and throw them away and you're then also discarding the larvae now in theory this sounds like a good idea and it worked a little bit I definitely got some larvae in the potato slices but not all of them I think if you have a big infestation this is just not going to work this might work like for a few of them but for everything I don't know it wasn't effective for me this also did not prevent the adult fungus lab from lying additional eggs in the soil so you know the cycle always continues number three apple cider vinegar and dish soap as I mentioned before I tried the additional way of catching gnats you know like fruit flies and stuff by putting out a mason jar with apple cider vinegar and dish soap usually fruit flies kind of just get attracted to that and they fall in and they drown but the fungus gnats were not interested I left this mixture out for at least a week and not a single fungus gnats fell in so yeah next plan the next thing I use is this I'm gonna have to read it because it's a little hard to pronounce diet oh ma ce o--'s earth I'm sorry for my pronunciation anyway food grade diatomaceous earth is mineralized fossil dust that is both natural and non-toxic to the environment it contains microscopic shards of silica that physically shred any insect that walks through them it will supposedly kill any gnat larvae and adults that come in contact with it as if they were crawling through crushed glass now this definitely does not work when it's wet and did it work for me well a little hard to tell I still had fungus and that problems even after putting this all over the place and I watched some of the adult fungus gnats literally walk right over it and they seemed fine I don't know if they died later on but this alone did not solve my problem but it might be something you can use in combination with all the other methods you're doing but honestly this wasn't really effective for me one thing to keep in mind though if you do use this is to wear a mask while you're kind of like dispersing the Sun of the soil because the powder the dust can like get in your eyes and face and it you know even with a mask it made me cough like the particles are just so small so wear a mask I'm sure everybody has a mask right now so you can wear that while spreading this over the soil the next thing I did was sticky traps and sticky traps are meant to catch the adult fungus gnats they do not take care of the problem with the larvae but by catching the adult fungus gnats you're preventing them from laying and therefore continuing the cycle where more and more fungus gnats are born so combined with other methods I actually think this was pretty effective I have sticky traps all over my balcony I've caught hundreds of fungus gnats with them and overall they're pretty effective I've got other bugs as well bugs that I didn't want to catch but you know at least I prevented probably hundreds of thousands of future fungus and that babies from being born so I highly recommend sticky traps combined with the next method which I'm about to talk about so the next thing I did which was the most effective thing that I have tried was using this here this here is called mosquito bits but it's not just for mosquitoes it also takes care of the fungus gnat problem so the active ingredient in mosquito bits is something called bacillus thuringiensis bacillus thuringiensis let's just call it by its abbreviation BTI and BTI is deadly to the larvae but harmless to all other living things now if you buy one of these things you're gonna see some warning labels on here that could be concerning so back here it has some precautionary statements where it says it's hazardous to humans and domestic animals and caution harmful if inhaled or absorbed avoid contact with eyes clothing whatever all that stuff avoid breathing and contact poison control if inhaled so of course I was thinking how is this organic if there's all these warning labels on it but I did more research I researched like the bacteria that's in there that is you know killing the larvae and from my research it appeared that everything about this was organic but I decided let me just email the company and find out and this is the response I got miss glass the mosquito bits are 100% safe for use with vegetables the active ingredient only affects the true Flies insect order diptera to all other organisms including mammals it a benign protein there are certain statements that must be included or omitted from the label regardless of how safe it is as this is a registered pesticide the best way to use the product for fungus gnats is to use four tablespoons of bits per gallon of water that you would normally use to water the plants put the bits in a stocking or other mesh baggie and let them soak for 30 to 60 minutes in the water stir or agitate the water and what are the plants covering as much of the soil surface as possible then simply throw away the use granules this can be done each time you water until the problem is abated and this was from the vice-president of the company who emailed me back which I thought was super cool because usually when you email a company like you don't get that kind of a personal response anyways so I did exactly what he said I started putting you know the mosquito bits in water and I started watering all of my plants with it and it is solving the problem over the course of maybe like two weeks I have pretty much gotten rid of my fungus and that problem I still have a few but it is nothing like what it was before and I'm confident that if I keep watering with you know the BTI water they will be eradicated pretty soon like I said there are very few of them left so to sum it up if you have a fungus gnat problem what I would recommend is a combination of these little sticky traps combined with mosquito bits that you're going to be dissolving in water for when you water your plants and this combination should eradicate your fungus gnat problem and if you have a vegetable garden that they're in you can rest assured that this is a safe and organic way to get rid of them so I hope that video wasn't too long so again I am no expert in gardening however I have dealt with these fungus gnats for so long and they have been plaguing me literally in my apartment and in my mind like the bane of my existence was fungus gnats for several weeks and I'm super happy that I found a solution and I just wanted to share that so yeah let me know if this works for you hopefully you can eradicate your fungus gnats as well because I know super-annoying anyways give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it subscribe to this channel if you're new here I'm gonna be making lots more videos about all my adventures on my balcony because a lot of my life is spent on my balcony these days so yeah take care enjoy the rest of your day and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Nicole's Corner

Views: 193,659

Keywords: balcony gardening, balcony garden, fungus gnats, mosquito bits, bti, Bacillus thuringiensis, diatomaceous earth, eradicate fungus gnats, get rid of fungus gnats, kill fungus gnats, fungus gnat solution, gnat traps, yellow sticky traps, do mosquito bits work, are mosquito bits safe, are mosquito bits organic, organic pest control

Id: v-t1yjPxw0w

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Sun May 24 2020