Have you been seeing a lot of tiny insects flying all around your home and landing on your house plants? They are not going after food or drink so they cannot be fruit flies. They seem exclusively interested in your plants. And that’s when you will notice that your plants are dying. The gnat or fungus gnat is very different in appearance from the fruit fly. The fruit fly is round, fat and brown with red eyes. The gnat is thin and pointed and has very long legs that stretch out. They are frustrating and hard to kill and they will destroy all of your plants and house plants.
They are around one-sixteenth of an inch and look a bit like mosquitoes. They also have a long segmented antenna that can make it obvious what kind of bug they are. The big question, like fruit flies and drain flies they seem to appear from nowhere. The truth is the eggs were probably transported into the house by you, after buying an infested house plant.
Both fruit flies and fungus gnats feed on the debris in your potted plants. They eat the organic debris in the soil and this will take nutrients from the plant and cause it to slowly dies as all the organic material is consumed out of the soil by gnats. They are a common issue for people who like plants and once you have them the only solution is often to get rid of the plants, all of them. However, there are some home remedies you can try. The adults are annoying because they hover around and tend to get in your face a lot but the larva can kill your plants even faster. Buried in the soil they attack the plant root directly and can cause severe damage to the plant that cannot be reversed. They are plant killers, that is what they do. Ignoring this infestation will end with every plant in your home dying.
Start by not watering your plants. Most house plants are drastically over watered and do not need so much. Plants do very well in dry soil and only need a little water to grow. Gnats on the other hand need wet soil to grow and change into adults. If the soil is dry the larva will die and the gnats will not be able to reproduce. This is a very quick and easy way of dealing with the problem but also risks killing your plants through under-watering.
You may also want to think about the humidity in the house. If it is too high then the situation is perfect for Gnats to reproduce. If you were to buy a dehumidifier it would not hurt the plants but the Gnats would lose their warm wet environments. Make sure your plants have proper drainage. Aside from the dangers of mould and mildew building up, it will also give the larva a great place to live while it eats your plant’s root system.
Make sure to get the right soil, it should have organic material that will decay slowly, most commonly is coconut meat chunks. That is the white bits you sometimes see in bags of potting soil. Perlite is also effective at keeping gnats away. Make sure not to water it too much and you should be good to go.
