Hi James,

Isn't that frustrating? I have fungus gnats in the veggie garden right now because the soil is incredibly wet and there's standing water in there. I hope that when the soil dries out, the fungus gnats will go away too. Otherwise, I'll be treating with Bti too.

Dawn

I have about 300 sq. ft. that I had Cole crops on. I had nematode and fungus gnat last fall so I was trying to till that 300 sq. ft. often in Jan. in hopes to kill of some of the gnat and nematodes. I notices one day that I had a lot of flying insects that I thought were fungus gnats. I could not believe that they were hatching out in Jan., but that was how it appeared. I understand the adult stage is only about a week long. The way things look now I will have a ton of them this summer. I need to get something to apply to the soil also. I also found a young grasshopper that day. This may be the year of the insects.

Larry

Larry,

I haven't seen any grasshoppers yet. When I see them in January, I expect a bad year in the summer, but I made it through January without seeing them, so maybe this will be my lucky year.

We had a horrendous number of hoppers here in 2010 so I expected the worst in 2011, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. That gives me hope that 2012 won't be too bad either. At our house the population seems to cycle upward for 2, 3 or 4 years and hit a peak, and then slowly cycle back down. I hope we're now in the 'down' portion of the cycle and that 2011 wasn't a fluke.

I cannot rototill any portion of my garden at this point, unless I am going to use a motorboat with an outboard engine. All that rain we were wishing and hoping would fall last summer, well...it's been falling here this fall and winter. Better late than never. I hope the rain drowns the grasshoppers and their eggs.

Dawn

Dawn, I am expecting a hard gardening summer, some of it will be because of reduced time I will have available, some will be insects and the fact that the deer are about to carry me off. When I left Mom's last night there were 3 in her driveway, when I got home there were 5 in my north garden. Judging from the tracts they are in there every night. The rye looks like it has been kept mower short all winter. I nave no choice except to reinstall my electric fence. I hope they have not learned that the top wires are not hot.

I will have to order BTi, because I don't know anyone who has it around here.

Larry

I found mosquito dunks work well for mosquito infested pond and pool. But didn't know they work for gnats. Gnats biting the vegetation in the green house garden is so frustrating. I'll try dunks.

Here is a link that might be useful: Gnat Bites

The Bti works great for gnats, so much so that there are Bt products packaged specifically for Gnat control. Since many of us already use mosquito dunks for areas with standing water, it is easy to just use what we have for fungas gnats. People who don't routinely have mosquito dunks handy year-round can buy Gnatrol, which is OMRI-listed.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Gnatrol