Good morning all! Thank you for your replies! I am so glad to hear the Knock out Gnats will work, i will go ahead and purchase it today! I used to make my own potting soil with black dirt, sand, & perilite, but then others said it wasn't good for houseplants because there was no nutrients in the soil and it was to heavy when drying out which kept oxygen from reaching the roots. I did have more problems with other pests when using my homemade soil, but not gnats. I may go back to experimenting with making my own again. The potting medium i have been using says on the bag...... Miracle Grow Potting Mix for indoor/outdoor containers. This stuff has actual wood chips/chunks in it. I bought some last season and also this spring, both with the same very bad smelling, moldy mildewy smell. Actually strong enough to make you cough when breathing in above an open bag or a pot of wet soil. I also noted that when starting seeds in this mix, after the top had been wetted, in 2 days the wood chips showing on top of the mix, started to grow white mold and the smell was worse. The wood in it looks like some of the shreded mulch you see for sale. My concern with trying to sterilize potting medium is whats in it. Are we talking sterilizing actual soil and not the peat based mixes? Most container mixes have fertilizer, perilite, vermiculite, & wood chips in it, which causes my concern of heating this up in the house. Especially me, as i am the worlds worst cook to begin with! Any thing concerning the stove/oven and me,is great cause for concern and disaster! ;) Thanks for helping me learn & grow with my plants! Tonia

I've never gotten fungus gnats to get attracted to vinegar any more than they are attracted to cups of water. Both will accumulate some drowned gnats, but neither does all that much. Fungus gnats are harder to control than fruit flies, as their larvae feed off of the compost itself, and adults seek out wet soil with high organic content--vermicompost is basically the ideal nursery for them. I've seen them try to literally dive-bomb into the moist dirt when I repot plants. Luckily, they haven't gotten into my worm bin (yet), but I've had them in my plants and seedlings. Huge annoyance and, in the case of seedlings, the maggots can eat so much of the developing roots that it permanently stunts the growing plants. In my plants, I drench with hydrogen peroxide, which kills the larvae, but I wouldn't do this in the worm bin for fear of hurting the worms. Something with BTi (Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis) such as Gnatrol, Mosquito Bits, Knock-Out Gnats, etc., will kill the fungus gnat maggots. With regular application, you stop the life cycle, but the adults do not die immediately, so you might want to supplement with sticky traps, etc. Not sure whether this is effective on fruit flies. It will not hurt your worms. Note that BTk (Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki) is not effective on fly or gnat maggots or mosquito larvae. It's used on caterpillars and grubs.

I"m sure there's a lot of smart people here that know a lot more about plants and house plants than I do but to say that "If you have gnats, there's a 99% chance your plants are suffering from excess water retention", just isn't true. I've had the same 28 house plants for 5-15 years (depending on the plant) and all are thriving. I've only had a Dracaena die on me a few years ago due to my water quality i believe but it certainly wasn't root rot. Last July, a friend of mine gave me this amazing Philodendron Micans becuase he was leaving the country. Shortly after getting the plant, my wife and I went away for 10 days. We came back to fungus gnats. I immediatley quarantined the new Micans and completely changed the soil but it was too late. Many of my other plants, including plants i run very dry like ZZ, hoya, snake plant had fungus gnats. I've never had a fungus gnat issue in the past so i really didn't now what to do. Like many people, I tried using BT and yellow sticky tape combo (the rememdy that many poeple are recommending), Bonide systemic granules, hydrogen peroxide, diatamacious earth, neem oil and nothing worked. I tried completely drying out my soil and again, fungus gnats came back weeks later. After hours of gnat research, I read about someone with a similar problem and she said to cover the drainange holes in all your plants and cover the top layer of soil with sand. It appears that fungus gnats are skilled at finding any moist soil, top or bottom so they can and will use your drainage holes to lay their eggs. Their eggs can also lay dormant for many weeks in dry soil and then hatch again when you water your plant so drying out your soil, even the top two inches bone dry, doesn't always work. So no, it doesn't take just poorly drained plants to make fungus gnats happy. Poorly drained soil certainly helps them thrive but they will thrive just fine even in slighly damp, properly draining soil. I was desperate and I really hated covering my soil with sand and wil likely remove it at some point but i'm happy to report, i've been fungus gnat free for about 2.5 months and all plants are doing fine. You have to make it impossible for any gnat to gain access or escape from your plant's soil. This will break the life cycle. Hopefully this is helpful to anyone else looking for a gnat solution. (And there's no sign that my plants are under any additional stress due to the sand compacting the soil undernearth. I used about 1/4 - 1/2 inch of sand, just don't go too crazy with the sand and you will also have to slow down your watering because the water pools temporarily on the top of the sand before it is absorbed and reaches the soil underneath)

It's more important that what nutrients are available are only those the plant needs for normal growth and available in a favorable ratio, than where the nutrients came from; plants cannot absorb anything in organic form. Also, a container medium's structure is it's most important asset, the second is how long it can retain that structure while in use. A medium's ability to provide nutrition for the plant should be very low on the list of things to focus on, this because it is monkey easy for the grower to institute and take absolute control over their plants' nutritional needs; and, there is nothing in worm castings a plant needs that it can't get from a good soluble synthetic fertilizer. Worm castings diminish a medium's singular most important asset - its structure. Al