Gnats?

[b54red]

I went out and checked my tomatoes closely today after they have been in the garden for around 10 days and looking good. I found a lot of gray gnat looking insects on the underside of some of them. I don't know if this is a pest or something to just leave alone. I noticed them when watering my azaleas a couple of days ago they swarmed up when I sprayed the plants. I have not noticed them before. Maybe I just wasn't looking in the past; but I'm sure I have never seen them this thick before. Should I spray them and try to run them off or leave them be?

[amberroses]

I have the gnats too. They actually try to attack my eyes and nostrils as well as my tomatoes. I think moisture attracts them. I don't know if they are harmful or not. When I tried to remove them from the tomatoes they were either dead or paralyzed so I don't think spraying them would help much in my case,

[cgs]

This site is terrific.

I built Earthtainers according to instructions and very quickly was rewarded with fast growing Heirloom tomato plants...However, I didn't think the gnats were bad. A little reading here and I learn they are bad. I first tried removing the plastic mulch, applying Dipel dust to surface and applying bark mulch. I sprayed one pyretherin based pesticide and maybe there were a few less gnats.

Then it got worse. I made a more general post, mentioning gnats and Ami made some helpful suggestions.

I started researching more and more. I like the idea of the yellow sticky traps, but don't like that they catch beneficials. I have noticed a couple of small beneficials feeding on the gnats. I hadn't really decided on this route, when i read you can put some wine in a small container with some soap...just happened to have some wine to dispose of. This worked great as it wasn't a full day and there were a lot of them in the wine.

But still they were everywhere. I sprayed another pesticide made of rosemary oil, thyme oil.... and that might have made another dent...but just before that the bark mulch was crawling with them everywhere. I am getting nervous as now my 4ft tall plants are showing signs of root stress up top. I ordered some Mycogrow as it contains BT and I read it might help. The BT is supposed to kill the larvae. I ran from the mailbox to the make the soil drench. This last paragraph all in the last three days and I think I now see there are less gnats. I hope that did it.

I liked the idea of beneficial nematodes, but the locals didn't carry the ones that target gnats and the cost of ordering them is high.

Today I finally went to the hydroponics store for Fox Farms Big Bloom and they recommended GoGnat - which they are out of. Sounds like they are familiar with this problem. If I still have gnats in a couple days, I'll give it a try. I am hoping the Big Bloom will help de-stress the plants.

I really don't like gnats now

[cgs]

Spinosad in a soil drench appears to have solved my gnat problem - I wish I had figured this out a month earlier.