I like your attitude. I wish I could find some entertainment in watching the gnats that swarm around my house plants. I thot about letting them live in peace, but then they started drowning themselves in my coffee!
Now that is going too far.

ellenr

Birdgardener, scale....cute....hmmmm....

Every year I get white spider hatching in the house and they walk all over the ceilings. Little tiny spiders walking everywhere, hanging down on probably their very first threads. They land in my hair. They land in my food. They might be cute on the scale of bug cuteness but that isn't enough for them to avoid my vacuum cleaner. I imagine they would be less cute under the microscope.

ellenr
The only thing that has helped me with gnats are those yellow sticky traps - with tanglefoot. Don't bother with vaseline on yellow cards because it doesn't work. I just bought a tub that is meant for trees. I think I will make my own cards or put it around the inside rim of the pots. They are only plastic and there in my basement. I don't know what I would do for houseplants in the livingroom though. Can't live with yellow sticky traps in the living room too long.
I couldn't find a good way to apply the BT. Soaking dunks in water didn't work for me. Even called the company. They didn't have an answer.
A cyclamen has something very microscopic on it. They look like tiney white spots even under a magnifying glass. I took the whole plant out of the pot and stuck it under water in a plastic bag with lots of dish soap suds. If they show up again, the plant is out in the cold.
Birdgardener,
How about getting one of those ladybug farms they sell in the science department for kids? They always get out anyway. They might curb your problem and you will have something else to examine under the microscope except the sugar ants might find the raisins.

Loretta, how did raisins get into this?

Ladybugs - I'm picturing a minimum order of 500 or so flying around my house...think I'll wait until the plants can go outside - they could have gone today - and let the wild ladybugs go to work on them. The problem is that they never remove every last one of the pests so every winter it's the same old food chain in action.

Lisa

pretty little pine cones growing on my arborvitae turn out to be bag worm; must comb through the bush loaded with them and dispose of before it gets too warm and they hatch.

cute little field mouse living in my garden this summer has taken up residence in my kitchen this winter. brought two friends with him/her, too. and don't you know they looked so cute swimming in my water-filled kitchen sink that I could not let them drown and released them all across the street.

hearing a little scampering at night coming from my living room celing and wonder what else has joined our family and how i might possibly get into a LR ceiling/bedroom floor/exterior wall to get at it???

last year a bat took up residence in the basement and eventually ended up on my bed pillow late one night. alas, i could not kill the creature that hung upside down from my canopy bed and showed his tiny teeth at me, looking so much like the spawn of satan. he too was set free, as i ushered him out my bedroom window. well, someone's gotto eat all those stinking mosquitos in my yard.

You have to feed raisins soaked in water to the ladybugs when you buy those kits assuming you don't have "fresh meat".
A couple of years ago, one poster on the seed exchange bought some lacewings and set them free inside his house to eat his aphids.

Sugar Magnolia,
Spawn of Satan! LOL!
I am like you, doing the rescue release thing. But the mice get driven away so they don't find their way back in.

Sugar, you have to watch out for those bats. Obviously you didn't get rabies but my whole family had to get rabies shots because one got in our house while we were sleeping and that meant we didn't know for sure that it had not bitten us. A little girl died a few years ago of rabies after one was found in her room - it wasn't near her but it had bitten her while she slept.

No more bugs in my houseplants since I started using a few drops of flea and tick shampoo each time I water. I use approximately 4 drops to a gallon of water and we are bug-free. Buy the cheapest flea and tick shampoo you can find. It will last for years.

It goes without saying but perhaps I had better say it anyway - Don't use this mixture on any plants you will eat!!

Hello 'other' Loretta!
That seems very clever and so simple. I've never heard of that one before. Does it work on fungus gnats I wonder?

Wow birdgardener, that's so sad! And a lot of people have bats come into the house. I would have never thought of that. Seems like a bat bite would be obvious.

Here is a link to the bat story. Scroll down the page.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bats and Rabies

I would be reluctant to use flea and tick remedy. If it poisons fleas, and sometimes it kills the cat too, not sure I want to feed it to my plants.
I noticed that the only plant that didn't have gnats or mites or whatever they are, is the one that was mulched with store-bought cedar mulch. And that makes sense, since cedar repels moths. So this morning I removed the top soil of all pots and covered them with the mulch.

the number has been declining but that is because I am killing them all by hand. Hard as heck to catch them while they are in flight, but easy to smoosh them when they are alit.

ellenr

That is true. One is only suppose to use a pesticide indoors if its specifically labeled for that use.
I have very few gnats now this year and I brought in a lot of plants from outside. I used tanglefoot like I said. Any plant that showed gnats flying in and out of the pots got dumped outside, as much soil shook off as possible, soaked in sudsy water in a bucket, roots, leaves and all, and repotted with new soil. I hardly see any now. And I did have some to start.

Yes Loretta it works for fungus gnats too.

I don't feel worried about using it inside because you would use it on your cat or dog, who lives inside. Plus, we are talking 4 drops per gallon - not a heavy concentration.

Loretta

That's scary about the bat bite killing the little girl. I never thought of it biting us in our sleep but this little guy was about as big as my thumb or smaller -- and his teeth were barely visible so it's no surprise she did not feel it's bite.

The cat found a country cousin of my mouse visitor. Needless to say, that one was not released. I wish those darn hammar traps worked but my guys are so little that they get the PB w/o setting off the trap.

I really wonder what type of mice these are. I referred to it as a field mouse but this is incorrect. All four that we have seen in the past 5 months or so have had an oblong body about the size of my thumb, small ears, small eyes, a slender face, and long tail. They are not eating any human food (or dog or cat food for that matter). I don't know what they ARE eating just that they aren't in any of my food. I keep imagining some gigantic rodent will make himself visible one of these days -- did you ever see Steve King's NightShift?!?!?!? LOL

BTW the cat stays in the basement -- otherwise, being a ferral cat, he'd be an excellent mouser. Too bad the mice aren't afraid of dogs -- we've got three and they're useless (for rodent control).

Now that I've started a few seedlings, I am waiting for the gnat population to increase. I don't have any qualms myself about trying the shampoo. I told my friend in Long Island who is having a battle with them but she doesn't try anything I suggest. Still she calls once a week to weep over her seedlings. Glad to hear from her anyway.

Sugar Magnolia,
I use the mouse cubes from Walmart. It's a live trap and works fast. I've caught most of them within the day. I carefully lift them without tipping the door open and put it in a shoebox then drive them to a nearby park. Once, my son insisted on chasing the mouse after we released it, it ran up a tree and a hawk swooped down on it. So I figure I am feeding the local wildlife. I always leave a trap out now, just in case, and they get them before I even know I have one.


I've had two types of mice so far, the white bellied one which I consider a field mouse and a very dark grey one which I think of as a house mouse.