Spotted a gnat in my cucumber sprouts this morning - next steps?
1mon 11d ago by lemmy.ml/u/yo_scottie_oh in gardening from lemmy.ml
Background: I've started a second round of seeds indoors, this time a mix of cucumbers (spacemaster and muncher) and tomatoes (tiny tim and marglobe). For my first round in April I used those Jiffy peat pellets, which I don't think I'll use again b/c I'm reading online that the mesh netting may not break down as quickly as I had initially thought. For my second round I used a mix of Jiffy seed starting mix and coco coir as recommended by Gary Pilarchik of Rusted Garden, which I also used to pot up my first round seedlings into 3" pots. I hydrated the mix w/ three pots of boiling water as shown in Gary's video and then let it sit for a day or two before using it.
Good news: My cukes have sprouted after three days!
Bad news: I must not have saturated the mix enough to kill all the fungus gnat eggs b/c this morning while inspecting my cucumber sprouts, I spotted what I assume to be a fungus gnat flying around inside the humidity dome.
Advice/Next steps: Is it time to head to the store and pick up some mosquito bits? What other approaches for treatment and prevention have worked for people of c/gardening?
Further reading: How to Identify and Get Rid of Fungus Gnats | Almanac.com
Yup, just start using the mosquito bits.
Fungus gnats aren't really harmful to your plants, they're just a nuisance. If you still have a dome on them, put some sticky traps along the bottom edge. They like to walk up out of the soil to find a high point, so they'll walk right into the trap.
start using the mosquito bits.
Will do.
put some sticky traps along the bottom edge
Like these yellow sticky traps that I can stick in the soil?
Those would work, I think the classic transparent ones for windows is probably cheaper though.
TIL these exist
Yeah I've used those with limited success, they work better if you have one edge touching the rim of the pot because of the walking thing. In your case I'd cut them up and stick them on the dome, that would be much more effective.
Hopefully you only have one gnat.
I went with a liquid source of BTI and like it so much better. I don't have to deal with soaking the mosquito bits.
I use a different one but that seems like it would work
Get rid of the domes.
You mean remove the domes now that the seeds have sprouted or would you recommend eliminating the domes entirely from my seed starting workflow going forward?