Been seeing little black flies like you see around the soil in most house plants. I’ve heard you guys talk about using dawn dish soap and water. What is the ratio? Per gallon. I googled and got a tablespoon. That was way too much. My plants look horrible a couple days after application. It’s the only thing that has changed in the grow. I hope they come back. Looks like the leaves have a black outline all along the leaves and little black spotting. First time I did companion planting. Don’t think I’ll do that again. I’m going to try mulch. Cedar chips maybe same as I use for my snakes terrarium. Any other tips for those little black flies would be appreciated. Thanks.
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I just use a sticky trap hanging on my light and keep a fan blowing over the soil, but type fungus gnats in the site search bar and you’ll find at least 10 different ways of dealing with them. The soap is merely a deterrent for leaf dwellers and not a great one at that. What you did was clog up the pores so to speak. You can easily fix that by rinsing the leaves with plain water.
Flies lay eggs in soil that hatch into larvae that live in soil. Just need something to eat them and control them. Cedar might help as it had some antimicrobial properties.
Get a small bag of Gnatrol which is high quality BTI.
Add that to your water everytime you water for 3 weeks.
Take two yellow sticky cards and lay them over your soil.
They’ll be gone within 2 weeks.
The problem with dishsoaps is they have something like a degreaser in them usually or solvent like stuff cant think of the right word. I did a lot of looking into that over mites. Soap sprays do work but if you are going to spray cannabis use murphys oil soap. It is made from natural things like animal fat and will not strip the protective coating off of the leaves like dish soaps will and it does work good for veg. I don’t know about on knats though as they are usually coming from your soil. I used it on spidermites in veg and it does great but you dont want to use it very far into flower.
I use approx 3 tsp of murphys oil soap per litre in my hand pump sprayer. May want to start with just 2.
I had a big battle with those little buggers. Use some sticky traps to catch the flying adults. Diatomaceous earth in the top layer of soil helps kill the newly hatched larvae. A good layer of fine sand atop your media can acts as a physical barrier for adults wanting to lay eggs. Also look into nematodes that are beneficial hunters of the newly hatched in the soil, and try using water that has mosquito dunks soaked in the water to add BTi to the soil. Good luck, it’s a battle since they rehatch so quickly.
I made a trap with a plastic bottle with top inverted like a funnel, and filled with applecider vinegar. whiteflys etc all fly in and drown. never see any signs since i put that in the tent. plenth of drowned bugs though
Spraying your plants won’t do anything vs gnats.
Gnats live most of their lives as little larvae in your soil. They only turn into flies and leave the soil to mate and lay eggs at the very end of their life. To beat them, you gotta take the fight to the soil, because that’s where they actually live.
I recommend predatory nematodes. You can find them at many grow stores or you can even order them off amazon for pretty cheap. You want “SF” or “Steinernema feltiae” nematodes for fighting gnats.
I would do 2-3 applications about a week apart to totally get rid of them. The population will majorly drop after the first application, but they won’t be gone for good until you apply a few more times to get any survivors.
Placing sticky traps near your soil will also help control the problem as they can catch adults before they lay more eggs. Focusing on prevention and proper IPM is also key to avoiding pest problems like gnats.
I wrote a free IPM guide to help people learn the basics of IPM and preventive pest control.
You can get the free guide here:
https://growerslove.com/pages/get-the-free-ipm-guide
One of the many things you can do as a homeowner to keep your house free of those pests is to learn how to get rid of gnats with Dawn dish soap. Simply combine it with other things like vinegar, stale wine, or sugar and apple cider vinegar.
You can read more here:
https://thesoapco.org/get-rid-of-gnats-with-dawn-dish-soap/