I am writing a series of blogs about my experiences in growing an organic container garden and most recently my problems with pests. In my last two posts,I had been battling gnats, and dealing with my dogs messing with the plants. The dogs have been staying away thanks to the bitter orange and the gnats have gotten a lot worse. They have been buzzing around the house, floating in the dogs water bowl, and the dogs have been scratching a lot. I know most web sites say they don't bite, but they bit me, so they may have been biting them. I ordered more gnatrol, the order I got was only enough for two treatments. I tried using honey on yellow paper to attract the adults, it caught a couple but basically didn't work. I couldn't stand it anymore so I moved everything outside and re-potted what I could, separated the heavily infested from the really light infested and am leaving a bunch of plants outside until I get the gnatrol, more of the sticky stakes and the nematodes I ordered last night.
Nematodes are microscopic round worms that eat the larvae of fungus gnats and a lot of other problematic garden pests. I was leery about using them, but have gotten pretty desperate this week. If these things don't work, I may just give up on keeping the plants in the Florida room. I ordered this from Amazon:
http://amzn.com/B00B7RG4C8
I read online about microwaving the soil prior to potting, so before re-potting any of the plants , I moved an extra microwave we have in the garage out on to patio and got a glass covered dish I never use and tried it. I did it for 10 minutes and checked the temperature and it was too hot and couldn't be used. The website said to not let it get more then 180 degrees. It was over 190. If the soil gets burned, it could change chemically and damage the plants. So I threw that batch away and tried it for seven minutes it was still too hot, it was also really messy and I decided to give up on that method.
I had one of the containers my husband made and filled with soil before I got sick, still sitting out on the pool patio and wasn't sure if the soil would be OK after being out in the sun for over a month, but I read that was a great way to ensure there are no fungus gnats or larvae. So,I decided to re-pot with that soil and I put a layer of rocks on the top, to prevent the gnats from laying eggs in the top layer of the soil. Tonight there are a lot less gnats flying around, none in the dogs water bowl and the dogs are not scratching
. Unfortunately I only have twelve of the plants in the house, the rest are outside. I had the umbrella up to keep the new seedlings from getting scorched and have the other plants in a don't they will get a lot of shade, so maybe they will survive this. Only time will tell.
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