worm poop??

or some kind of bug manure

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

That looks like worm poop to me too. I'd probably be repotting, there's really no need for something like earthworms in a container environment, as welcome as they are in the garden...

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1182558}}

Thanks for your comments, everybody!!

I did a ton of internet searches, and yes, it does resemble worm poop. I repotted the plant, and discovered to my surprise that the roots were hardly 2 inches deep, even though the plant is about 8 inches tall! So the bottom 3/4 of the pot just had a solid clump of dirt in it that was probably wet all the time. I put the plant in a shallower pot. I picked through the dirt that was in the old pot, and I didn't see any earthworms or anything else suspicious, except a number of very tiny white worms! yuck. I did more Google searches and deduced that they seem to be fungus gnat larvae, which makes sense because of the above-mentioned wet and rootless dirt problem. So if that's it, it's not serious, esp. since it's repotted. But I am still not sure how they could've produced those poop-like things... hmm.

Sounds like a good solution for the plant, even if it's still kind of a mystery.

mother earth is SOIL ...

pots are filled with MEDIA ...

and dirt is what is all over you.. when you play in either of the above ...

do you really mean.. that you are using soil in your pots???

if so.. that is your base problem ... and why the roots of the plant.. are not reaching further down into the pot ...

media is engineered to hold and shed water ... among other things

soil.. tends not to do the same.. creating layers of good and bad ... and the wet/dry interface.. is where you end up with gnat problems... the too wet part ...

gnats live on the soil surface.. i am surprised to hear they would lay eggs at the bottom .. but i am too lazy to research that.. and will defer to anyone else on that ...

ken

I have this exact problem in the bottom of my plastic plant trays underneath my snake plants. I took one of the plants out from the tray and climbing amongst these Brown pellets where these little microscopic white about 3 or 4 of them AND not only that I've also seen what this person reference regarding the small reddish brown flying bugs as I also have seen those in my house. The only thing different about my situation versus theirs is that I'm also finding these pellets on the outside of the pot and tray on the floor of my living room, along the baseboards and even saw some of these pellets clumped up in a little pile on the side of the wall next to the window about 6 ft high up from where the plant sat. It's the creepiest thing. I would continuously wipe the pile of pellets off of the wall next to the window and within 15 minutes I would return back to check and the pile would be up on the wall in the exact same spot!!! So I literally would sit there and watch the wall so I could spot anything climbing up the wall or flying in the air but never saw anything. It makes me think that I have a ghost in the house or something because what is putting these pellets on the ground and up on the wall? Yes there is earthworms inside of the pots of my snake plants but the worms have always been there and I never saw these pellets before even when I had the worms so I'm not quite convinced it's the worms especially when it's getting on the floor and on the wall and I found no worms on the floor or the wall and there's really not a way for the worms to get out of the pot. Anyhow h here's a picture of what it looks like, (disregard the white stuff as that is diatomaceous earth for the fruit flies.) Hoping somebody can help I'm desperate to solve this mystery.