These are fungus gnats laying eggs in the soil. They will leave fungus and kill leafs leaving brown spots. Pull any leaves you see and and orange egg balls. They love hot wet areas

Miracle grow soil is main cause of the problem

I'm kind of surprised to see that most people think these are eggs!? Pretty sure these are slow release fertilizer pellets similar to osmocote. Fungus gnat eggs are going to be much smaller then these..

Erin: exactly right. Fungus gnat eggs are tiny. For reference this page illustrates it. Note the scale on left of one mm. So it looks the eggs are closer to a tenth of mm. Individual eggs will be very hard to see unless it is a sizeable cluster.

I don't know who "Nick Wallace" is, but he's 0 for 2 on comments with correct information in them.

Message from my neighbor Who is a horticulturist: Actually the yellow pellets are slow release fertilizer. The white pellets are perlite and are an expanded mineral meant to create porosity in the growing media.

If you notice gnats with your indoor plants go the the store and get neem based products and do a soil drench with double the label rate. Also be sure to let the soil dry out between watering, that will help with gnat prevention.

To all the people stating categorically that these are fertilizer balls - THEY ARE NOT.

Yesterday I noticed some of my petunias were just drying out and dying, so in the evening i planted them out in the garden. I shook all the soil off before planting. This morning while hunting an ant nest where I had emptied one of the pots I noticed that an ant was carrying off one of the smaller balls. So I squished one, it popped and liquid came out. In my search today to find out what these things were I came across this forum.

These are definately eggs because ants will not carry off fertilizer to eat or feed their grubs. The lady who said she clearly saw an embryo is right. It seems to be gnat eggs from another site that someone else posted a link to.

Go feed the ants with these things and you will see. Yes some are pellets to drain the soil and some may be fertilizer. If they were not there before they are a pest.

The larvae feed on the roots, so yes it will kill your plants. Added to this, I have whitefly, aphids and spidermite feasting on my petunias. Now I am soaking all the pots in water with aphicide, whitefly and spidermite poison. I watered my plumerias like this in my greenhouse and it worked.

While not ALL of the yellow (or blue or green) round balls are fertilizer pellets, the vast majority will be. Virtually all nursery purchased plants will come with prilled fertilizer pellets included in the soil mix or sprinkled on top. A number of potting soil brands will also.

But I will add that fungus gnat eggs are so tiny as to be almost invisible to the naked eye....the gnats themselves are only 1/8" in size. There are other insects/mollusks that will lay eggs that resemble the fertilizer prills in size and coloring but they are NOT fungus gnats, nor aphids, nor whiteflies. Slugs and snails are the most common culprits but they lay eggs in clusters, not individually.

Brush up on your botany, people, before making these assertions!!

Insect Larvae! https://gardenculturemagazine.com/garden-inputs/growth-media/seen-this-in-your-potting-mix/

Slug and snail eggs make perfect sense to me for a already have a prob with said creatures!!! I’m disposing of my planters soil and buying new soil. Btw diamatacious earth will rid you of these creatures.

This is a brand new blossoming cherry

I noticed that the leaves are falling off prematurely. The bark is coming off. So I inspected the soil. Little blue balls all around. What is this and how can I treat to get my healthy tree back?

This is an old and long thread. But i thought i will add some info that i found as I was reading about the yellow fluid filled balls that appeared in my pots too. Initially, i was worried about nematodes based on the beginning posts in this thread. But after some more digging, i found out (thanks to wikipedia) that nematodes are almost invisible to eyes (maximum 1 or 2 mm), but mostly much smaller. Hence, their eggs will be much smaller. From my limited reading it appears that nematode eggs may appear similar to the fertilizer balls, when they are viewed under microscope. I could not find out (in limited time) if nematodes appear in my area (SF bay area) soil, but i am guessing unlikely since they seem to be on the watchful radar of Agri-departments.

Beer! Slugs love it! They go in and drink it out of a cup when put in your garden. They drink so much they drown in it! Learn from slugs.

Also, free beer will attract all the slugs in the neighborhood.

root-knot nematode egg sac

The root- knot nematode may be microscopic, but carrying around an egg sac with 500 eggs in it is probably what those balls are.

So then...what are these balls? They are liquid filled and were growing in roots of moss and dirt on an old roof.

I had beautiful strawberries growing. some in hydroponics, so in soil. my daughter bought me a bag of miracle grow potting soil. I have since developed all kinds of gnats. My hydroponics strawberries were the first victims. the the potted ones. I finally threw the entire pot with soil out. I treated with 1 part hydrogen peroxide to 4 parts water with a squirt of liquid soap. bought fly strips. started spraying them on walls and ceilings with rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle. I had thought I had gotten rid of them. they moved to my 8 ball squash. all potted in miracle grow potting soil. GRRR I have grown lights going, now threw the squash that died no matter what I did. bumped the pot, like a swarm of bees the gnats flew up out of the pot. Again, I have throw the hole pot with soil into trash

How do you kill fungus gnats in the soil of Miracle grow potting soil. should I return bag, call miracle grow? I have thought about baking the soil in the oven at 350or so for an hour. but I don't want to loose plants I have been growing for 2 months. ugh. what should I do?

Just to post a final comment on this subject from my end. My plants grew just fine last year (though not spectacular production, because it was my very first year of gardening). The sacs turned out to be not an issue, and all plants rooted fine, filling my large pots. Don't worry much about commercial bags you purchase. I found lot more obstacles in insects and diseases that i had to handle.

I bought 5 plants from Ikea last month and found yellow or white or green balls on the soil. All squirted liquid out when squashed. I freaked out and have asked a few people. If theres a black dot within the squashed liquid its likely snail or slug eggs. If not, its likely perlite (white) or osmocote (yellow).

So, are those Perlite or slug / snail eggs below??

I am not an expert, but answering this because of your ID :-)

This thread has already answered this issue. Most likely these are harmless fertilizer balls that come in various colors, depending on the brand. In my case, the fear was not justified. Just experiment for a season, and you will know. I was worried about various things during my first season of gardening (including nematodes), because i was reading way too much articles. For home gardeners, too much analysis kills the fun (that was my conclusion after a year).

sorry guys but these are gnat eggs! I found my plant infested with them and millipedes. i first noticed when I watered my plant one day and saw tons of millipedes, I immediately put the pant outside and gave it a soap water bath, grabbed some soil and started sanitizing it to repot it. the best day during a repot, when I dumped out the soil almost 300 of these eggs were in the pot! The more I dumped the more I saw, while inspecting the roots, I found so many of my roots damage with these guys sucking the life out of my plant. im glad I caught it in enough time but these little suckers are the worst

Somaliah - thanks for the great pictures. Mystery finally solved, i guess. My potted plant soil was full of them too. This year i found that as long as the plant is fully nourished in all requirements, it has great ability to fight off various pests and diseases. Once it lacks an ingredient, the immunity goes down (just like humans).

Not so fast. Those pictures Somaliah posted looks more like CRF (controlled release fertilizer) to me than any egg. Osmocote makes in that color although looking at the size it is probably nutricote. Fungus gnat eggs eggs are way smaller than that and are always in a cluster.

They were not slow release anything they were eggs. Stop the madness.

Tons of these little guys were also in my plant before I repotted!

They’re clearly eggs, don’t be fooled! I’ve Never ever seen so many of them in one pot or attached or attached to the roots. i posted one picture but I had to cut tons of roots off that were dead and dying because they were sucking the life out of my plant

Squish one of those eggs. If it has a hard outer shell then it is not an egg. Soil pests do not produce eggs with shell and they are soft, frequently translucent and much smaller. Those larvae you are showing came from eggs which are much smaller than those critters themselves. You would barely be able to see with your eyes. The size of the so called "eggs" you are showing are more like snail/slug eggs. These types of posts come up many times in many gardening sites and 99% of the time they are fertilizer prills not eggs.

Think of what adult pest can lay those eggs. They have to be quite big. Often they lay 10-100 eggs at a time. Which critter will be able toproduce say 10 of those. That critters size has to be lot bigger that. have you seen any critter that size in and around your soil? So you can keep thinking they are eggs but there is no evidence they are.

That makes good sense. Thanks tropicofcancer. Indeed the eggs size matters, and the size (rather than color or position in root) would tell more about what these yellow things are. A small gnat would not lay eggs that is half its size.

Easy answer. Ground Pearls AKA Margarodes. I don't believe everything I read or see on the internet but, there are too many articles to back up my findings and I'm simply surprised that no one came up with this before. Here's your answer.

See, told you! Case closed. Still, can't believe I'm the only one who answered right and informative enough to put this feed to rest. I hope you agree. If you don't, well, it's ok. I'm still right.

Zoom in on the picture far left. It's the same balls. Sure there's different stages shown and one may argue that what I posted isn't the same as what we see up in some of the other pictures of gold/tan balls. But, I took this from a PDF and the page I got that from showed plenty of pictures that appear to have been taken by the same person as the ones that are posted way above my Correct answer. Glad I could help. You're welcome. God bless you.

Thanks raymond. Your info will help a lot in future searches.

So far, none of u are right...they are called "root nodules" and the purpose they serve is to hold moisture inside just incase of "drought". Kinda like a hump on a camel. They are used by the plant to keep it hydrated incase it has to go long period of time without

I have a snake plant and saw for the first time yesterday what i think is ground pearls. How do i get rid of them? So i can save my plant.

Everybody talks about these small yellow pearls in the pots, when you press them they burst.

I can read about this in several languages. Everybody is speculating what could it be. Isn't there in this world a botanist or biologist who could finally tell us what it is???

Some slow release fertilizer contain actual liquid inside the balls. You can literally “pop them” and liquid fertilizer will come out. They aren’t eggs, and i’ve seen some come in gray and yellow colours but i‘m sure the whole rainbow exists. Someone mentioned root nodules, which would only be the case if they were directly connected to the root and looked like a hard, solid tuber inside (these are common but not limited to alocasias and calatheas for example). Fungus gnat eggs are practically microscopic, and unless your plants have direct access to the outdoors it is unlikely (but still possible) for it to be snail or slug eggs. What most of you are seeing are simply slow release fertilizer, if it’s truly bothersome you can buy organic potting mix that doesn’t contain any. Any generic potting mix from your nursery or garden centre, such as promix and miracle grow will contain these fertilizer balls and likely already in the soil your plant comes in from the nursery or store. You can literally sift through your new bag of potting mix and find them. If you truly believe them to be eggs, again unlikely, scoop them out and wait for them to hatch lol. You probably will not have bug babies but maybe you can gain some peace of mind.

One of these poped in my

This is controlled release fertilizer 🤷🏻‍♀️

Soil or fungus knats are killed by hanging or placing a yellow glue trap near the spot where you see them. It will need to remain in place for several weeks. In addition, soak Mosquito Bits in water, and water the plants with the water. Mosquito Bits are Bacillus thuringiensis Israelensis.

If you do a Google search on Vine Weavil life cycles, you'll see that the eggs are exactly what the yellowish spheres containing a milky white substance are. You'll also see that the Vine Weavil larvae that hatch from these balls attack and eat the roots of the plants that the eggs are laid between, causing an othewise healthy plant to collapse and die.

The adult weavil is flightless and climbs up the plant at night (the insect is a dark, brownish black colour), taking chunks out of the edges of the leaves.

Unfortunately, the eggs are the same size and colour as the fertiliser balls - you can't tell the difference until you try to squish them.

Have a read of the many sites with info about them.

could be a turmor fallen off a deer. I've found one and cut it open.

Its definitely slow release fertilizer, here is the link to the company that make them. Not eggs, slug eggs clump together, like grapes and are soft and gooie like the picture shows

https://www.growwithosmocote.com/mission/

I've seen lil green balls in my yard. When I squeeze them, they pop and release white liquid. I actually find these poppable lil green balls satisfying.

Just wait 'til you discover bubble-wrap!

Al

There is this popular vegetable in India called "parwal" from gourd family. If picked late then it has these round white seeds filled with a white liquid when cooked. Many were fond of popping them in their mouth. I used to hate it.