48
Would a venus fly trap help deal with house gnats?
(beehaw.org)
All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.
See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.
(It's not mandatory, but we also encourage providing a description of your image(s) for accessibility purposes! See here for a more detailed explanation and advice on how best to do this.)
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
There are a few practical management steps you can take as well to help reduce the gnat load.
Sand (washed playground sand as an example) as a mulch layer over the top of the potting mix will drain quickly and removes the gnat's preferred habitat for egg laying.
Bottom watering, while admittedly slower than pouring from the top, also helps to reduce the amount of time the top layer of soil is wet enough for them. Allowing the potting mix to dry thoroughly between waterings improves the efficacy of this practice.
I knew about sand but not bottom watering! Thank you for the info!