I can't imagine anywhere else on the net is better equiped to answer if soap bubbles of essential oils of rosemary, citronella, clove bud, lavender, and rose geranium are ok to add to flower pots one is planning on inviting a worm into than here.

Dosen't Dawn cut oil? But I can see the concept you are trying to achieve. The first guy who was trying to soak paper towels in a sink of soapy water did not get a good friends and neighbors response. Then look there are "wet ones" now that everybody uses.

Worms may not like soap or oil. They breath through their skin. Their skin is like the inside of our cheeks or nose.

The little winged pests may of been fungus flys. Yuck. They love damp. Letting the plant dry would be good. Putting the plant back out side would be good. Ignoring the fly would be good. Taking a real close look at the fly and searching on line to see what type it is would be good. Taking a picture of it would be good.

I don't think anybody has ever shown the dedication to run a jacuzzi bath with jets on high and add essential oils to make bubbles to cover their plants with to prepare them to be worm ready. So you got us there. Along with a movie plot.

"so insects in the soil did not have a path to fly out without facing the bubble solution" General Patton could pick up pointers.

Earthworms live under the ground and in a few tasty plant pots. Compost worms live above the ground in horse manure and compost bins. I don't know which is best to live in a pot. But every pot would be lucky to have one.

Your plants may enjoy vermicompost. The results from when compost worms eat garden and kitchen vegetable scraps leaving behind just what plants want. Many a gardener has shouted praise of vermicompost. We all have dedicated compost bins just for the little guys and then use the results for our plants. I know it is a bit weird. But we enjoy it.

Thank you for your response. I answered and it didn't go through, so this is my 2nd answer.

Will water plants less, esp for now. Went ahead and purchased some smallish earthworms (Trout Worms) this morning, and added about 3 to each pot. So now I won't water with soapy water for fear of offending or killing the worms.

Some of them didn't want to go into the dirt and just stayed on top and died. But I think some of them went into the dirt. There were about 150 worms total, and I have found about 10 dead on top of the soil of five different pots. I figure there are probably another 40 that didn't make it, and if I'm lucky, about 100 of them will be alive in the pots right now. Some of them were very feisty, jumping around.

Thing is, how will I be able to tell if they are in there alive?

After looking on the web, some pics of fungus gnats do resemble the tiny, dark, winged creatures that I am seeing. I get a good look when one lands on the computer screen. Ordering red wigglers online would have been about $30 for 1000 to 2000 worms, a good deal but way too many worms for my needs. All I needed was a little over 100 worms. So I purchased Trout Worms from Wal-Mart, four containters of 30 worms for $2.96, and each had about 4 extra worms in it.

Thanks again for your help.

I personally think you are aiming at the wrong target. If you want castings, grow worms and then keep back castings for tea or as is.. Leave the few worms per pot idea alone.. You can do the worm thing but you will have NO idea if they are effective or not..

A jacuzzi shower won't deter fungus gnats. They lay eggs in the soil, and their larvae eat plant roots. When they reach the gnat stage, they fly out of the soil. Your best bet is to put the plants outside. Fungus gnats reproduce at unbelievable rates. And in my experience, the soil doesn't have to be all that moist to support them.

Deanna

Cool; but last year I tried worms in the potting soil with the plants, It did not work. Worms like it too wet for the plant. When the pot started to go into the dry cycle the worms would leave and dry out. It did not take very long and I had no or very few worms left If I kept the soil wet for the worms the plants could die from root damage. Even when I tried to water from the bottom by using the flow pan the worms would crawl out of the drain holes and not go back into the soil, but just dry out when the water would evaporate, It was frustrating. Now I top dress with castings. If you can make it work let us know I think the idea is a good one.

Curt

Thanks for all responses. The whole worm thing, wanting to put them in pots, got started when by complete surprize, I found a couple of big, happy, robust, thriving worms when repotting a plant. It was a WOW experience.

I've no idea what is going to happen with the worms OR the gnats, but I ran across an interesting post, while browsing on the cellphone, and saved it as a favorite: from Thriftyfun, thread called Gnats in Potting Soil, some guy called nerakk from Herperia, CA had a gnat problem and "decided to use a flea collar in the plants...cut it in sections and wrapped it around in each plant...[said] it worked...however, you need to change when the labeling indicates it is expired...usually 3-6 months. (07/18/2009)"

Sorry I can't provide the url, but I thought that was pretty crafty. I'm going to try it. I wonder what he means when saying he wrapped it around in each plant...? He cut it in sections. I had originally thought he meant that he cut the collar up in pieces and put a few little pieces in the soil, and also wound around the stems. On re-reading it, now I'm not sure what he meant.

I've been using worm castings, and worm poop tea, for a long time. It just sounded so neat to have the little worms in the soil, they're so cute and they would be good for the soil and the plants. I'm starting to agree that it has a poor chance of working.

(P.S. In answer to a post, I only used the jacuzzi to generate soapy foam that additionally had essential oils added to the water that bugs supposedly avoid, allowing a soap mixture to be added to the soil while hardly wetting the soil. I didn't know if it would work, but the foam itself was made of tiny, tightly packed bubbles, that you could just pick up big chunks of and walk around with. If you ever need to generate foam, the jacuzzi will do it.)