Well this time of year, we now have them again. And again my husband is revving up for the same practices as last year, which to my mind didn't do a lick of good except give him something to kvetch about and nag me about doing.

Today I put out a saucer with some honey in it thinking the gnats would land on it and get stuck. They are ignoring the honey, right next to my indoor compost container, in favor of sitting on some okra tops in same. I tried putting some tape where they'd been sitting on the counter, but they have chosen to sit elsewhere now. Or fly around erratically, which is even more annoying.

Is there anything useful I can do to get rid of these things? If it were due to food sitting out (my husband is urging me to get rid of all the tomatoes sitting out, ripening on the counter), then I'd have thought it would have happened a month or so ago when I had partly burst cantaloupes sitting around. I had a few then, but not many. Now there's so many that they're bothering me and I'm not that much of a clean-freak.

Rather than have fights about whether my food-handling practices are attracting bugs, I'd rather do something to eliminate the gnats. What can I do that really works?

I will be interested in hearing other suggestions. Give your hubby a chill pill and a hug and tell him it's not like an Egyption plague.

Barbara

The first - mix in equal parts apple cider vinegar and sugar. I then put it in a jar of some kind and sit it up on my fridge. You can make several and set them around various parts of the kitchen. Gnats are drawn to any decaying food (like bananas at my house) and for some reason, they're drawn to the vinegar smell too. The sugar will make it a bit syrupy (in time) and when they land, they can't get out and drown. I try to make sure that the jar is only half full with this mixture so they have farther to fly up to get out.

Second - mix 2 T Red Wine Vinegar plus 1 t. Dawn Dish Soap. This works well in a concentrated area like a countertop. I haven't had as much luck with this as the first recipe, but it still works. Maybe add a Tablespoon of the soap to the first recipe? That also holds the gnats in the solution and they drown.

Those little buggers are just down right irritating when they're flying around your face while you're trying to do dishes. You might also try baking soda with the vinegar down your drains and/or garbage disposal.

Hope this helps!

Paula

Time to get out some more little jars. I'll try some vinegar/sugar/soap and see if they like that more than vinegar/dishwashing soap.

Barbara

Barbara - you can try this recipe for your crawling ant critters but have you tried pepper? Red or black, I've had complete success with lining my window sills and even the back of cabinets with either or both kinds of pepper. There's something about it that ants just do not like. I've even mixed a bit of grits in with just for good measure. It has ALWAYS worked. Thru the years, my young adult daughters have called me from their apts. crying "Mom! I've got ants!! What do I do?" I always gave them this antidote and they were amazed it worked. The only problem is you have to re-apply every 2 or 3 days and don't open your windows on a windy day. Maybe a combination would work? Try it and let me know! And I don't think it would help with the monster grasshoppers we've got this year.

Good luck to you both. Those critters are so danged annoying!!!!! Of course, they're mild compared to cougars! LOL!

Paula

Trapping sound like a very good idea. It will also help to eliminate anything possible which is ripe or spoiling, and keep your compost pail tightly covered. Be sure you never leave stuff in the pail for a full 72 hours, and you should never have fruit flies coming out of it.

George

Barbara, For little ants, I've had successed with the pepper Paula mentioned, or with cinnamon.

Dorothy, I have seen compost buckets like you mentioned, but don't remember where although I'm sure it was online since your typical store doesn't carry compost buckets.

The next time I come across one in a catalog, I'll post it. I'd like to get one of those myself.

Dawn

Soonergrandmom, thanks for the link. I'll look as I'm about ready to retire my old container.

Dawn, You must have more compostables to have to go out twice a day, but this time of the year I take out once when I feed the chickens.

I remember one year I had some kind of bugs flying around and I had a little trouble figuring out why. Finally I discovered the problem. I had dehydrated some bananas and I had three one-gallon zip-lock bags of them up in the cabinet. The insects had actually eaten holes in the plastic to get at the contents and all three bags were ruined and had to be thrown out. Now when I store dehydrated produce, it's in the freezer. I'm trying out storing a bag of dehydrated apples in one of those five-gallon buckets that I bought wheat in. It has a really tight-fitting lid. If that is problem-free I can save some freezer space in the future.

There is also some kind of fruit-fly or gnat or whatever that infests houseplants. If you examine the plant carefully, you can see the little critters milling around on top of the soil, and in and around the leaves of the plant. In years past, I've killed them by setting the plant down inside a paper grocery bag, dropping a mothball into the bag and then putting another bag, upside down, over the one that's right-side up. I learned from Dawn that you shouldn't use mothballs for stuff like this and in fact have gotten rid of what I had. I keep thinking about my Grammy Britt and how she used to store things in mothballs so much that her house always had that mothball smell. She died of liver cancer when I was 15, and she was only in her early 70's.

I don't keep very many plants in the house any more so I don't have any recommendations about what to use instead of the mothball method.

My garden was so late this year in terms of producing that I have been doing a lot of canning, dehydrating and freezing the last couple of weeks....more of doing a whole lot at one time instead of having it more evenly spaced out over the course of the summer. Consequently, I have had a huge amount of compostables, but it is beginning to drop off as I catch up on putting food by.

Game bird, Good. I'm glad you've got a handle on it. It does seem to be a pretty common problem at this time of year.

Dawn

Can someone help?

I'm going to assume y'all have had rain and your soil is moist right now because those are the conditions that encourage gnats outdoors.

If that is the case, you're likely going to have gnats until the soil dries up or until y'all have a really hard freeze, which in your zone might be a few weeks away still.

There are some great tips for natural gnat control on the linked page.

If you don't have pets that might lap up the soapy water, place a white or other light colored plate outside the back door. Fill it with water and add a couple of drops of dish soap to the water. It will work as a gnat trap.

Good luck,

Dawn

The stuff is terribly hard to remove from your hands, I can tell you. I tried soap (not a chance), fingernail polish removed (maybe a little), and then rubbing alcohol (worked the best followed by soap).

Still the traps work for anything that might be flying around indoors!