Nature and Gardening

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All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.

See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.

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Would a venus fly trap help deal with house gnats? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by kbyanyname@beehaw.org to c/greenspace@beehaw.org

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I've got several small houseplants in my home office, and I really like having them around. I'm still pretty new to taking care of them altogether, though, and we've gotten dozens of tiny house gnats now. I've put up sticky traps and tried to use some pest control in the potted soil. But would a small venus fly trap be able to help here?

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[–] Kurt@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

Venus flytraps are great plants to keep, but they're not effective for pest control, especially against tiny gnats. The gnats you have are probably fungus gnats and your houseplants' soil is infested with their larvae. To get them under control you have to innoculate the soil with nematodes that eat the larvae. The particular brand I got on Amazon aren't available anymore, but the species was s. feltiae and they worked really well. There might be other good or better nematodes, but that's how you get rid of the gnats.