Not a pro here, but if this helps, here's my fruit fly experience; I took up vermiculture (worm composting), following online instructions. The instructions indicated to have them live in newspaper shreddings, I don't know if that worked for anyone else, but for us it began a fruit fly issue that did spread into some of our houseplants. For one thing we hadn't sterilized the worm castings before using them, that was a definite thing that allowed the fruit flies to spread to the plants. Google search some safe ways of sterilizing compost and soil that you think might have parasite eggs in it. But to get the fruit flies out of my worm castings, I changed the system. I brought in a bucket of sand and a bucket of old dried out clay/dirt from outside, and every time I added a bucket of plant waste to the mix, I'd bury it in the surroundings, then put a fine layer of dirt and then a finer layer of sand on top of all of the mix. That made it apparently entirely uninhabitable for the fruit flies. My theory is that to lay and incubate eggs, they need specifically the surface to be moist and rotten, I don't think they do a lot of burrowing, I'm guessing their wings would get damaged. So regardless of how organic the compost underneath is, they couldn't use it as a breeding ground so long as there was a barrier of dry sand and old clay-heavy soil. After figuring that out, I always pot my plants with a drier, older, nutrient parched soil for the top couple of centimeters. Haven't had the fruit fly issue since. Sorry if that wasn't concise! I thought it might help.

Alikhat, I see that you recently joined GardenWeb, welcome to the Tomato Forum. Everyone else that wants to read this post may want to grab a cuppa, it will probably be kinda long.  What part of California are you in? There's a lot of growing zones in California, all the way from 4a near Yosemite to Santa Monica's 11a. What works in one zone, may have no relevance to another zone. If you'd like answers from other GW members that are useful to you, its a good idea to include your location and/or zone in your profile so it shows on your posts. Now, on to the problems at hand. Even though kellogggarden.com lists their GARDNER & BLOOME® POTTING SOIL Natural & Organic For All Indoor & Outdoor Potting as "Ideal for indoor & outdoor potting, container planting, raised bed applications & an excellent addition to existing garden soil.” I have to wonder if that isn’t part of the issue. It is described as ”Organic, long-lasting ingredients including chicken manure, peat moss, worm castings & kelp meal. Perfectly balanced with essential plant nutrients & special water-saving formula features for excellent growth.” Mixes with manure in them tend to compact and not drain well. Your leaves could be droopy and the plants stunted from not enough air and too much water at the roots because of their water-saving feature and compaction of the growing medium. If you are in a zone like 5 or 6, and the weather has been cool, watering every other day may be fine. But, on the other hand if you are in zone 10 or 11, the plants may appear droopy because they aren’t getting enough water. GardenWebber sprouts_honor (Jennifer from Cleveland) had a wonderful suggestion on how to tell whether or not you need to water your tomatoes, and I quote here: ”Get a wooden dowel rod (or two) and sink it in the ground near a plant or two and leave it. Pull it out when you think you need to water. If the top is dry and the bottom is a little damp, it’s time to water. If it looks dark and feels saturated, wait to water. I use this technique with potted plants that don’t like being over watered and it’s helpful with in ground plants too.” If your moisture is right, it may likely be that your plants are starving. As edweather indicated, plants that are grown in any kind of container will need feeding more often than plants that are grown in the ground because each time they are watered, the water run off carries away vital nutrients. Many container growers will use a dilute solution of a liquid fertilizer every week or so depending on the condition of the plant. Additionally, they may not be able to utilize the nutrients in the “organic” mix you have them planted in because containers don’t usually have the “micro-herd” found in soil that helps plants use many types of micro-nutrients other than NPK. Looking at the stems of your plants, I am surprised the stems are not sturdier. When my tomato plants are that tall, the main stems look almost like small trees, and are 2 - 3 inches (or more) in diameter, the fine stems are possibly another indicator of the need for feeding more often. I don’t see any leaf roll, but I do see droopy leaves: When you've checked the moisture level of the growing medium 3-5" below the surface, you may have an aswer to what is going on with your plants. If it is soggy, they are drowning (and the paleness of the leaves could be an indicator) if it is dry, they need more water, if it is just right, something else is going on. Betsy

Like others say it is easily controlled but do not let them grow in number. Yellow cardstock with vaseline applied on both sides and hung near the base of the plant also works the same way as the sticky tapes. This will help catch the adult flies. The adults are not much of a problem but its the larvae that feeds on the roots and weaken the plant if there are too many of them. Here in California we don't have terrible freezing winter and I do not have space to bring my plants indoor, so I left them out all winter and didn't water them for 3 months except for occasional rain and they came right back up this spring. In my experience mint is very hardy and can withstand drought. You should be ok not watering for 2 weeks. Also if it's freezing weather where you live and the mint is indoor, I don't think your mint would need water for 2 weeks anyways. Spread sand and don't water for 2-3 weeks that will make the soil hostile for the larvae. If they still persist you can try mosquito dunks or gnatrol that contains BTi bacteria which is toxic only to the larvae and not humans and are safe to use on organic plants. All these methods take time to completely eliminate fungus gnats. Give your mint some time to recover and it should bounce back. Yesterday I put 2 cuttings from my basil plant in water. Last year when I did this, I think it took atleast 5 days to see tiny roots. I'm planning to leave them in water for 2 weeks to get more roots before planting them outside. Be sure to use water that doesn't contain chlorine and change the water every couple of days.

Blight is probably what is making people recommend not to reuse the potting mix. The spores that cause tomato blight (the late blight that crawls up from the bottom and makes the leaves turn brown and fall off) live in the soil and are spread to the leaves when rainwater splashes soil onto the bottom leaves. I have reused potting mix for tomatoes by mixing in some fresh compost and using it in the bottom half of the large pot. Then finish with fresh potting mix on top. My theory is the plant is less likely to get those spores if the reused soil is covered. My tomatoes always seem to get blight no matter what, but it was certainly no worse than usual. Compaction is a real problem so if you try this, use very coarse compost or some shredded wood like you would find in coarse potting mixes. Any leftover mix from last year ends up in my compost pile to (hopefully) re-equalize the spore population. I also mulch around tomatoes as soon as they are planted to reduce the soil splashing.