[QUOTE=soozbz;649880]Thanks for the great info, everyone! The pyrethrin, dish soap and diatomaceous earth combo sounds worth a try. I suspect this might be too big a job for my tiny spray bottle - maybe it's time I invested in an actual garden sprayer![/QUOTE]


You might want to consider spinosad too.

[QUOTE=oakley;649851]I'm finding with a few of my early issues with fungus gnats and aphids, caught early, but
non the less aggressive, is using a combination of organic treatments that deal with all
the 'life stages' of the ugly predators.
Not one product solved the problem.

The Cannabis growers have so much of that figured out being 'high value' crops.[/QUOTE]

bt will take care of your fungal gnat larvae, which for me do more damage than the gnats themselves. Once they get to adult stage, there are plenty of things that will kill them.

[QUOTE=soozbz;649880]Thanks for the great info, everyone! The pyrethrin, dish soap and diatomaceous earth combo sounds worth a try. I suspect this might be too big a job for my tiny spray bottle - maybe it's time I invested in an actual garden sprayer![/QUOTE]

Definitely a good idea.:idea

Bill

I tried spraying the water/pyrethrin/DE/dish soap combo on Wednesday evening. By now my tomatoes have even more dead leaves than they did before, and I'm a bit worried I might be doing more harm than good. I sprayed my other plants too, and half the leaves fell off my bell pepper plant!

Any idea what could have gone wrong? Maybe I used too much pyrethrin or DE? Or should I have hosed off the plants the following day to remove the residue (which was still there today)? Or is this supposed to happen?

Sorry, can't answer your question above soozbz. How are your plants now?

I wanted to let Bill know I made the mix of neem oil, dish soap, bt and de in my gallon sprayer to use yesterday and it worked great. I did have one time that the sprayer seemed to be clogged and I just hit the head on a piece of wood which dislodged the blockage. The plants look very well covered with the de.

If the soap concentration is too high it will burn the leaves. Usually if that happens it's easy to identify, the leaves will have sunken spots where they kinda dry out.
Also, the badly affected leaves will continue dying even if the mites are gone (and they probably aren't yet).