Aphid/Gnats/Flyers infestation - Duct Tape FTW

[halloweed2006]

The problem and my possible solution:

Hi, i have an absolutely massive aphid and fungus gnat infection in my moonshine organic soil grow(them bugs love organics maybe more then the plants do). I'm under multiple kilos of light and have a lot of square footage to battle on, with a variety of ladys(lots of strains) I need to protect. This room is a perpetual flower room has a constant influx of new plants and plants being harvested.

I've been fighting these pests with beneficial nematodes(millions), ladybugs(thousands), sticky traps, organocide, SaferGro PestOut, underwatering, room cleaning and manually spending hours and hours going through plant after plant AFTER plant squishing the tiny pests.

Because of my effort i've been able to keep the population in check but I find it's blowing up once a week and becoming harder and harder to manage. It's becoming harder to manage just because of the sheer energy involved in fighting a heavy infestation in a large garden.

I'm organic 100% of the way so no chemicals so I'm going to beat these guys naturally. So now I have a new plan and I need you all at icmag to help critique it.

The plan:

The plan is to prevent the flyers from coming back into the soil and laying eggs. So this pest managment process is interrupting the bug's life cycle by preventing the egg laying stage. I'm going to do this by preventing the flyers from landing in the soil. Instead of using sand I'll be using duct tape to cover the soil. I'm doing this as an alternative to sand because I hear sand doesn't work all the time and it's easier for me to get access to duct tape then sand

I use plastic grow bags to hold my medium, so I've taken the rim of each plastic bag and wraped the rim around the stem and pseudo-hermetically sealed the grow bag with duct tape. So You can't see any soil because the top of the grow bag has been duct taped around the stem. I also put duct tape on all of the drainage holes. To water I just take off some of the tape and water and then retape after watering.

My plan is to prevent the flyers from laying eggs in the soil. I will be supplementing this process by doing daily organocide/PestOut essential oil sprays around the bags and base of the plant. I've found that spraying the actual plant more then once a week with any insecticidal/fungicidal oil can be dangerous as oil can accumulate and suffocate the leaves.

So here are some questions maybe you can help me out with:

Will the soil get enough air as to not become anaerobic?

Is taping the drain holes necessary?

Do you think this will work in extremely reducing and or eliminating my flying pest population?

What else should I be doing to help this process out?

Some further thoughts:

Battling these pests are a bitch and I'm pretty new to this growing stuff so I really admire all you all who are successfully managing the pests in your Garden. If this isn't working I'm going to coat the bags in sticky stuff or double sided yellow/white duct tape, and if that doesn't work I'm going to try Diatomaceous earth next and carefully coat the room in it.

Also if I had some porous screen like material such as cheese cloth, i'd be using that instead of using the plastic to cover the soil.

This is day 1 of the experiment, i'll be sure to let the icmag know how this turns out.

 

[buzzmobile]

Why not use Gnatrol to get rid of the fungus gnats?

 

[halloweed2006]

Why not use Gnatrol to get rid of the fungus gnats?

Thanks for responding buzzmobile.

I am looking for a more affordable and general solution that affects all flyers, but gnatrol works and is definitly the way to go for fungus gnats. If this duct tape solution doesn't work I'll begin using gnatrol.

 

[ackuric]

Try a HotShot No Pest Strip if you can find them in your area or online.

 

[Mr Celsius]

Try a HotShot No Pest Strip if you can find them in your area or online.

Hmm

Why don't you just kill him now, save him the horrible throws of cancer down the road. God I can't believe people use these... so bad for you.

Hollow, I believe implementing multiple measures, as you have done, is going to be the only way to combat this problem. I fear that, with no air circulation, you may have anaerobic conditions on hand. Typically root aphids create pythium, and pythium tends to be anaerobic, so you may be creating an ideal environment. This is merely speculation, I've never hermetically sealed my growing medium before...

Buzz, good suggestion on the gnatrol, but fungus gnats are more of a nuisance then a problem. I believe his real problem is the root aphids and gnatrol wont take care of them.

Scay Bees is the man when it comes to root aphids and pythium in organics. You should PM him, he'll know whats up.

 

[Storm Crow]

Hon, for the fungus gnats, you may want to try this old remedy! Put an inch or so of clean white sand on your soil. FGs lay eggs in soil and look for dark colored (high in organic matter) soil. The light color sand confuses them. The thickness of the sand layer makes it difficult to find a proper egg-laying area. If any eggs do get laid, they are going to starve in the sand when they hatch! No organic matter to eat! A few sticky traps take care of the remaining adults. A small added benefit- light will be reflected off the sand, back up to your leaves! - Granny

 

[halloweed2006]

Thanks Granny, Mr. Celsius and ackuric for joining this thread. I can no longer detect any fungus gnats in the room or on my yellow stickys. This must be due to the constant oil sprays and taping the soil.

The aphids are stronger then ever and unfortunately I learned today that the wingless aphids lays just as many eggs as winged ones. So this whole plan is down the tube, at least it worked well on the flyers.

I'm going to be joing scaybees thread, http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=70503&page=5 and try to figure out ways to eliminate aphids with those guys and gals. See ya all at the party.