You know, as an indoor
and outdoor gardener, I battle my fair share of pests both here
in the backyard and the front yard and unfortunately, in my
houseplant jungle as well. And while there are some really
annoying pests outdoors, your aphids, your hornworms, there's probably no
more annoying pest than the fungus gnat. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening
where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. And you know, part of that is defending against the
legion of pests that can affect your garden. Fungus gnats, specifically
the ones in the Sciaridae family, they're the ones that
are the most destructive, especially to our indoor houseplants. They're super annoying and it seems like
there's a never-ending cycle of dealing with them once you get them. That's why we're going to go through
at a deeper level and really understand what they are, how they live, and how to
prevent and control them in this video. So cultivate that Like button for fungus
gnat eradication and let's get into the video. Now when it comes to
a pest, really any organism, including these plants that we're growing,
it helps to understand how they live. How they reproduce,
what's their life cycle. And so let's talk about their
life cycle. First of all, where do they like to lay their eggs? They like to lay their eggs in
moist soil near the base of plants, like this little guy right here. The eggs will go for about four to six
days. Then the larval stage comes out. When the larval stage comes out, it
has about a two week buffet period. It's feasting on organic matter. It's feasting on dead or
decaying or diseased roots. We'll get into why that's
such a big deal later. But then it'll go through a pupil phase
of about three to four days and then it will become an adult again. Those
adults live for about a week or so, give or take. The problem
is that those adults, it's a one to 300 ratio.
Those adults can lay 300 eggs, which means that even if you miss one, you're never going to stop
having a fungus gnat problem. So let's get into some prevention
methods and then we'll go into control. We've got four prevention methods
for you all to varying degrees of effectiveness. And I would encourage
you to use all of them simultaneously. Number one would be when you are
watering a beautiful houseplant, try to not overwater it. I know
that's kind of a very generic guide, but I do have an entire 20 minute guide
on how to water container plants that I encourage you to watch if you're
struggling with watering your plants. The reason why is because if you
water, and specifically overwater, you're going to cause root rot, fungal disease on your plant roots and
what does a fungus gnat like to eat? It likes to eat specifically that. So
you're kind of growing its food for it. You don't want to do that. Another
thing, very often recommended, this one in particular is from Safer
Brand. It's a houseplant sticky stake. And so what you do is you
would grab one of these, just one of these guys and then you would
attach it to this like that and then you just place that in the soil. Now that's more of a detection
mechanism for the flying adults. The adults will be somewhat attracted
to the yellow. They will hit it, they will stick to it. And remember,
every time you trap an adult, you're trapping 300 potential
future eggs. So it's a very, very helpful thing to do. Another thing, let's imagine that I got this beautiful
plant from a nursery and it's coming into my new houseplant
jungle. It's coming into here. This is the new plant and this is the
area that's my actual jungle, right? I don't want to just let it in, we have
to put it in a bit of a holding zone. So leave it in its own area
for a little bit. First of all, inspect it when you get it from the
nursery, but leave it in its own area and, you know, kind of take a peek, see
if there's any disease, any damage, any pest control
problems. And if there is, don't add it to your garden cause then
you're just going to be spreading it. This will be a vector for everything else. So once it's past its little holding
period, then you can move it in. So that's just a nice little tip. And the final tip I'll say is they
like to lay their eggs on moist soil. So if you prevent them from accessing
that, that can be a really good idea. For example, we have a little bit of this plant fiber
right here as a mulch layer on top of these plants. That's going to deter them
to some degree from laying their eggs. Now you could lay a thicker
barrier if you want to, and that can be a really good tip as well. Keep in mind some houseplants don't
really like to have that mulch on there, so you just kind of have to modulate that. But those are four really
good prevention tips. So now we're dealing with some control
tips once you actually unfortunately have the problem of fungus gnats,
which I actually do right now. So these are tips also for myself. Now there's things that you can
do like a hydrogen peroxide soak, 3% hydrogen peroxide, soak it.
Supposed to kill the larva. I've seen it work to varying
degrees of effectiveness. Part of the problem with that is that you
have to make sure that then there's no adults to start the
cycle over again. Right? And so you might kill it in
one pot at one point in time, but then the cycle could still
perpetuate itself. Now, meanwhile, often recommended this one's from Safer
Brand. I really like their products, not sponsored or anything. I
just really like their products. And that can work really well neem
oil in general, the Azadirachta, which is the active compound with the
neem oil is one of the most effective things for many different pests. The problem again is you still have to
do a bit of a soak and you're still going to mist over time. Now the one that seems to be quite
effective is this right here, Mosquito Bits. It seems like it wouldn't
be for fungus gnats, but in fact, what's really working in here is something
called BT, Bacillus thuringiensis, specifically the subspecies israelensis. Now what happens is you basically
are just sprinkling these bits. It's like an inoculated
brand type of product. There's just literally these little bits
and every time you water you're going to be adding a little bit
more BT into your soil. And so that means that every time you
water you're turning your watering into a pest prevention and control
method at the same time. So you could layer just a thin layer of
mosquito bits over the top of any soil that's affected. And that
can actually work really, really well because it helps
with the dimension of time. Remember just cause the life cycle, we
know it, you know, egg, larva, pupa, adult and repeat. Just because we know that doesn't mean
that every infestation is happening on the same cycle. And so
if you can water, water, water and continually add some control, then you can start to cut down on the
overall reproductive rate of the fungus gnats. It sounds very nerdy and complex, but this is just how I think
about this pest control stuff. And it is kind of cool to
think about it this way. So that is my absolute
best prevention tip. I hope that you don't
even need this video. I hope that you don't have to deal
with fungus gnats cause they're super, super annoying both for your
plants and also for you. Like if you're reading at night and your
nightlight and they come flying around, it's so annoying. So I hope this helped. If there's something that you really
found effective that I did not mention, drop it in the comments. Remember, we're trying here in the Epic Gardening
community to teach a lot of people, 10 million people, how to
grow their own food and, and deal with plants in a healthy,
safe way. And I can't do that alone. So if there's something you see, drop
it in the comments, that'd be very, very helpful. Like and subscribe
if you liked the video. And guys, thank you so much for the explosive
growth of the Epic Gardening channel. I can't even begin to tell you how much
it's changed my life and so I can only hope that I can pay that forward
by changing yours as well. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
