OK, my entire purpose for blogging about organic gardening & living more naturally is to let you know it’s not that difficult, so you might be willing to give it a shot. I’m also honest (to a fault, according to some) so I am compelled to share the challenges as well as the victories.
I’ve had issues with gnats in houseplants in the past and the only way I was able to get rid of them was to get rid of the affected plants. Nothing else seemed to work. I was able to save my larger plants by adding a layer of sand to the top. Frankly, I don’t think those plants were affected yet and the sand kept the gnats out. The sand did not work for the plants that already had gnats, hence those plants are now gone.
I had used every trick I read about. The main thing I read that everyone seemed to agree on was apple cider vinegar in a shallow dish. It is supposed to attract the gnats, then they drown in the liquid. Well, it did attract them, however I must have had super smart gnats because they just hung out around the edge, for the most part. So, I decided to put the vinegar in a small mason jar, hoping they would at least go inside the jar and every once in a while I could put the lid on to catch the ones inside. That worked a bit better. Still, some just hang out on the rim or even the outside of the jar. I finally gave up on saving those plants & took them outside to get the gnats out. Once I did that, they finally disappeared.
Now, I have these little brown gnats. I’m pretty sure those originated in the indoor compost bucket. I don’t actually let it compost inside. It’s just where I collect scraps to take outside later. When I first started doing that, I was surprised that I had no issues with odors or any type of bugs and I wasn’t even covering the bucket. I’ve deduced that the gnat problem originated with banana peels. I strongly recommend you just take those straight to the outdoor compost bin. You might want to do that with any fruit scraps. I also realized that covering the bucket is a very bad idea. It seals in the moisture too much and causes the problems I didn’t have before, especially odor. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. I believe that may have perpetuated the gnat issue as well.
So, now I cleaned the bucket out and left it outside to eliminate that attracting them. I also put a jar of vinegar out on the counter in an attempt to trap the remaining gnats. That’s not working any better than it did in the past and requires manually trapping them inside. In fact, I think these brown gnats are even more intelligent, staying closer to the outside of the jar and very fast. I keep thinking I’ve gotten them all, then three or four more come from out of nowhere. Actually, I think I’ve only seen one today… crossing my fingers.