Great Judith, I’m glad it worked! Why shouldn’t it? Keeps the critters out of the house while still letting in air and light, so it should do the same for the seed boxes.
MANY years ago, I used Black Leaf 40 (nicotine sulfate) as my garden insecticide and it never seemed to damage the roses. Stunk to high heavens and I DID notice I didn’t crave a cigarette as much when I sprayed. hehehe I wasn’t aware it was “toxic” to roses. Interesting. I’ve had good success using Pyrethrins for fungus gnats with house plants, but they’ve never been an issue outdoors here. Kim
Ok… I have just repotted a rose seedling. It is vigorous, and it is about 4 weeks old. It has several true leaves and more popping up… but I also discovered thousands of fungus gnat larvae in the old seedling mix when I scratched the snail bait off the surface to clean it all up.
Is it still at risk from gnat larval damage even at this stage of its life?
LOL…ok there were MANY MANY of them…too many to count, to be sure, all wiggling around. They are tiny thread like white wiggly things.
I had photographed identical critters about one year ago and posted the pix here, and they were confirmed as fungus gnat larvae. I hope that ID was correct, because something about this situation just doesn’t add up…
The funny thing is that I checked some other outdoor pots which contain a few months old citrus seedlings. Those citrus have been exposed to high damp conditions, and relentless piddly rainshowers especially over the last few weeks. If dampness is the main culprit to attract these gnats, I would have expected fungus gnat larvae to be in the citrus pots as well…hmmm…I am confused.
The only difference is that the citrus did not ever have snail bait placed around them on the surface of the growing media.
Might the snail baits attract these fungus gnat?
Snail baits certainly attract cockroaches, which visit these seedlings at night and chew up the baits for a feed…I have to replace these baits once per week or so, due to them being eaten up… O:)
I also don’t understand why this seedling has not succumed??
George, what type of bait are you using? I use only the iron phosphate stuff that’s safe around food, kids and pets. I hope that’s not what you’re finding the roaches eating. Roaches, ants, earwigs and termites are abundant on this dry hill. Hate them all!
The snail baits I use contain 1.5%w/w metaldehyde. The local roaches love to eat them, I had no idea about that until I started to force-germinate rose seed in the summer (via embryo culture) when there are lots of roaches around. When I brought the rose seedling pots into the house at night is when I discovered the roach feeding frenzy that happens all over the rose seedlings for these baits, each night (
It is all a bit of a pain to be honest…vermin damage/ pesticides/and then the other vermin which seem to thrive on the pesticides, so you have to keep replacing the pesticides to feed the vermin that you were originally targetting… boooorrring.
As far as this “gnat infestation” of mine goes (or whatever else it is), I have no idea what to do or even what is going on, so I am going to actually do nothing about it, for once!
Hmmm… a number of posts from the old forum didn’t transfer…
Metaldehyde is moderately toxic, and can do in cats and dogs if they eat it. It will eventually biodegrade, I believe, into acetic acid, but is a probable carcinogen in its intermediate stages.
With regards to maggots, in the other post I clarified that the Bt strain for diptera (flies and mosquitoes) was a different strain than the one used for caterpillars. Bti is the israeliensis strain, and can be obtained as a very slow release mosquito-cide, or as a spray for fungus gnats. I have found that “mosquito bits” mixed into a damp medium a few weeks in advance of planting will offer adequate protection against fungus gnat larvae.
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