Tiny little flies

hank1949

16 years ago

I went and looked at my garden. Didn't see any bugs but waved my hand over the little mustard and spinach plants and saw a bunch of teeny weeny flies. They were on the ground and the plants. What are they? Also saw one teeny weeny bright red bug on the soil. These bugs are really really little. Had they not moved when I waved my hand over them I would never been able to have seen them.

Any thoughts on what the flies are and are they causing the damage to my plants. It's not happening to the tomato plants though. It's the mustard and spinach with holes on the leaves sometime to the point of only the stem part of the eaf is left.

Hank

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Comments (3)

Okiedawn OK Zone 7
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Hank,

If the flies are small black to gray flies with yellow markings, they are probably spinach leaf miner flies.The female flies will lay their white eggs on the underside of the leaves. When the maggots hatch in 2 to 4 days, they will eat their way through the part of the leaf that lies between the upper leaf suface and lower leaf surface, leaving winding, white tunnels. In about three weeks the maggots will pupate and mature into another round of flies. The cycle will repeat itself several times.

It could be whiteflies if they have a whitish appearance. Whiteflies are very small flying insects, but they are not actually flies. If you could view one under a magnifying glass it would look more like a tiny moth than a fly. Whiteflies feed on your plants and excrete a sticky honeydew in which a black fungus or mold will grow.

Finally, it could be flea beetles. They are tiny and more or less black and eat little holes in the leaves. Some of them have red heads. There is one specifically called the spinach flea beetle. When I have flea beetles they tend to attack veggie transplants that have been set out in the garden recently. When you wave your hands over the plants, the flea beetles jump up into the air.

For any of these you could try an insecticidal soap or a general-purpose insecticide.

Dawn
hank1949
Original Author
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I was about to ask where they came from when I realized that this is the reason for using sterile potting soil to start seeds with, isn't it? So I can blame the place that started these plants, right? Except I got them for free and the ones planted in other gardens are doing OK.

I do have a black thumb after all.
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Sandra, what's been working fairly well for me is 3-5" of dry-ish top bedding (initially dry, but quickly soaks up moisture) and a damp t-shirt on top of that. The shirt has to cover the bin wall-to-wall. No food freezing needed. Only see the occasional fly. Here's something more detailed. Kelly says the bedding is useless, so maybe it's just the damp t-shirt? Or maybe it makes a difference that I'm using leaves instead of shredded paper? =============================== Posted by Kelly_Slocum on Mon, Dec 12, 05 Newbie, fruit fly and fungus gnats in a worm bin, for the most part, enter the system as tiny eggs and larvae attached to the peels of uncooked fruits and veggies. We INTRODUCE them to the bin each time we feed. The dark, damp bin environment rich in fungi and decaying vegetation is an ideal breeding ground for these flies, thus their populations can quickly explode to impressive and annoying numbers. Burying the bin contents under mounds of paper, a control method widely touted on internet forums, has little or no impact as adult flies can easily crawl up through the spaces in paper shreds, or simply rest beneath layers of paper sheets until they are lifted, and the fly larvae appreciate the moisture-holding, light-inhibiting paper layers as much as do the worms. As it appears you've discovered on your own, paper layers have little impact on small fly populations. Fruit fly traps set in the bin, another commonly suggested control measure, are essentially useless as the bin itself is, by definition, a massive fruit fly food source, leaving little incentive for adult fly numbers sufficient to decrease the total population to enter the trap. The best way to control fruit flies and fungus gnats begins with prevention. Again, these small fly species enter the (indoor) bin as eggs and larvae on the peels of uncooked fruits and veggies. Pre-treating feedstock before feeding it to the system by either microwaving until it bubbles and pops (you may need to stir then re-microwave once or twice, dependant on your microwave, to ensure all of the feedstock gets sufficiently hot), or freezing solid for three days kills the eggs and larvae, preventing fly populations from being introduced to indoor bins and establishing communities. If the bin becomes infested with fruit flies and/or fungus gnats they can be controlled by initiating pretreatment methods to stop the introduction of new populations in conjunction with the application of beneficial nematodes. These nematodes feed on the fly larvae, interupting the reproductive cycle in the bin, and usually take about 10 days to bring the fly population under control. Keep in mind during this control period that any fruit of veggie left on a counter top, and any damp sponge or dishrag, unclean sink drain, or laundry hamper full of damp towels can become a fruit fly breeding site, so try to avoid making these sites available. Nematode control is quite effective, but is not a quick fix and MUST be performed in conjunction with pretreatment of feedstock and control of ancilary fly breeding sites. Further, nematodes are a cure, not a means of prevention. Once the flies are brought under control the nematode numbers typically decline in response until their numbers disappear entirely. These microscopic worms cannot be effectively cultured in a worm bin indefinitely unless the system is continually innoculated with fruit flies, which, of course, sort of defeats the purpose of introducing the nematodes in the first place... Pyrethrin is a safe, organic insecticide that can be sprayed in the worm bin to control flies. It, too, should be used in conjunction with pretreatment of feedstock, and discontinued once the flies are brought under control (long term use has not been studied in worm bins and there is some concern over negative impact to some of the beneficial insects associated with a healthy worm system). Prevention is the key to controlling fruit flies and fungus gnats in indoor systems. In outdoor bins, however, where the passing fruit fly or gnat can and does smell the wonderful bin environment, efforts at controlling them is essentially useless, and, in fact, is non-beneficial. Fruit fly larvae are voracious decomposers that aid the system in processing organic waste materials while posing no threat to you, your pets or your garden plants. Indoors they are a nuisance, landing in your coffee and merlot, but outdoors, they are another beneficial bin resident that can be allowed to flourish in the bin as nature intended. So, to recap; pretreat feedstocks prior to feeding indoor bins by either microwaving until bubbly and hot, or freezing for roughly three days; use beneficial nematodes or pyrethrin to control fruit fly infestations.
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Hank,

They could have come from anywhere, you know. They have been hanging around, lurking, just waiting for someone to plant something they really, really like so they could gobble it up.

Insects are just a part of the natural world. Sometimes it does amaze me that they can find gardens that contain the very plants they most want to eat.

Take asparagus beetles for example. There are not an overwhelming number of gardeners in Oklahoma who grow asparagus. However, just plant some asparagus in your vegetable garden and somehow the asparagus beetles will find it. How do they do that?

I have found that garden pests are the worst in new gardens. I guess a new garden is like a buffet to them.

I think the insects are worse in general if you don't have a lot of the good bugs like ladybugs, green lacewings, trichogramma wasps, beneficial parasitic nematodes, predator mites, spined soldier bugs and praying mantids. The good bugs help keep the bad bugs under control. It took me a long time to learn this.

When I was a kid, my dad always raised tomatoes. Every year, about late June or early July, the red spider mites would show up. They showed up not just on his plants but on the tomato plants of all his gardening friends in our neighborhood. Once the red spider mites showed up, you knew that your plants' days were numbered, no matter what you did. The gardeners would whip out the Kelthane and spray the plants and it seemed that, instead of helping control the spider mites, it made their population spiral wildly out of control. No matter what you did, the mites got worse and worse and worse.

As a young adult with a new (to us) home and garden, I planted tomato plants. About the 3rd or 4th week of June, the spider mites showed up. We sprayed with Kelthane and got the same results my dad always got. More spider mites.
It really made me crazy.

The second year we were there, 1985, here came the spider mites in late June. I was already beginning to move towards gardening organically, so I decided I would not spray Kelthane on the plants. Guess what? The spider mites never went away, but they didn't get worse and they didn't kill my plants. I began to understand that spraying a poison miticide or insecticide did not guarantee a bug-free garden.

Still, it took me many years to really understand it all. As I gardened organically, I came to have more and more good bugs over time and fewer and fewer bad ones. It took me FOREVER to really grasp the concept that the good bugs were keeping the population of the bad bugs under control.

What I finally learned, from reading a lot about organic gardening and THEN from seeing it in my own garden is this: if you spray a miticide to kill spider mites, it will kill ALL the mites, including the predator mites that eat spider mites. The bad bugs always rebound first as the predator bugs won't arrive until there is a good supply of bad bugs to eat. So, by killing off the one insect, the predator mites, that would kill my red spider mites, I had actually made my spider mite population worse.

Nowadays I have a good balance of bugs in the garden and the good ones help keep the population of the bad ones under control. Even though insect and mite damage is unsightly, it usually won't kill the plants.

For what it is worth, this year I have the fewest bad bugs I have EVER had. I can't explain why, but I would say my bug population is only about 10% of what it normally is. It might be the cold weather we had in April killed them off and they have been slow to rebound. It might be that last summer's drought killed off a lot of them. Whatever the reason, I am enjoying it.

Dawn

Tiny little flies

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Okiedawn OK Zone 7

hank1949
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Tiny little flies

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Okiedawn OK Zone 7

hank1949Original Author

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hank1949
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