Hey guys I got some worm castings filled with fungus knats is there any way to kill them so I can still use the worn castings like if I leave it on the hot porch for a day or two?or should I just return it and get another one,I notice that trying the organic route isn’t so great ive gotten bone meal up my nose,the smell on my plants smells like a corpse and the friggin bugs ahhh! I’m going back to dwc next grow!
Taking them back and getting another wouldn’t do anything. I guarantee if the bag you got has them then they would all be infested.
Best bet is get some BTi and spray with that every few days for a few weeks. It’ll kill the larvae so you’d slowly see them disappear over those 3 weeks.
if your bag of casting has gnats in it I wouldn’t use them. Good quality casting have enough biology in them to eat the gnat larva before they have a chance to even mature. I.E. there should be no gnats in a bag of quality castings.
what brand are they btw?
After thinking on it a min. They may still be usable but I’d try using them to make an aerated compost tea.
Just bake it in the oven for a bit and put some mosquito dunks in your water.
If you bake it all microbes, beneficial or not, will be killed. You will have to repopulate them with some appropriate tea.
Someone talked about grinding the mosquitoes dunk and powdering the top soil is also effective …
Edit: @Gpaw, wasn’t to not give you credit, just forgotten, fish memory …
Mosquito Dunks (there are several recent threads discussing BTi) will help.
When you get your pots loaded with dirt, top dress in 1/2 tsp of ground up MD. into each. (Works better than watering it in)
Water in (as best you can as it doesn’t mix well) more MD once a week.
Safers Sticky Strips are your best friend (get some!).
I have a 12" fan in my tent I affectionately think of as The Shredder.
It kills the majority that manage to hatch (if I don’t re-dose on schedule). Mind you some folks might object to splattered gnat bits stuck to the side of the tent
Cheers
G
Good to know!!! Not sure if I should ask this here, but Canadian tire had “chicken scoop” hen shit available in 2 litre milk cartons…anyone use chicken shit as a fertilizer?..I know sea bird shit and bat guano are great, but I’m planning in getting a few city-chickens again.
Stop snorting the bone meal, were you stoned and mistook your bag of bone meal for your bag of coke blood meal don’t smell so great either when wet, when ever I use either, the dogs are camped outside the tent for a couple of days
The Acti-sol (5-3-2)? I have been using it, so have a few others here. I like it. I’ve been ‘cooking it in’ with the other stuff - it literally disappears into the soil by the time I’m ready to load up pots.
I think Canadian Tire has dropped it this year (at least in Ontario) but Home Hardware carries it and they have it in 10 Kg. bags! 20 beaver bucks (that’s about treefiddy US$)
No worries @Shadey, they have treated it and somehow - almost no smell (nothing offensive).
Cheers
G
That’s good to know man, I would gag getting closer than 10 ft from our chicken run after it rained, the ammonia stink was so bad.
Oh Yeah!! I know that smell!
Cheers
G
Well then, no chicken shit for the indoor…
I was actually suprised how many different strains of myco and bacteria and microbes and probiotics and in Dr earth flower girl its lol 15 bucks you get way more then recharge even though I like both but I put dr earth on that shit os strong you put one scoop in with water its like 1500 ppm and even though its slow release my plants were praying within 6 hour its a good fertilizer tea and compost starter
Best way to use chicken poop is for activating compost piles. Its too hot to put in a worm bin.
I added some to my worm bin with no issues. very little though, just enough to cover the top before adding more veggie scraps. I use tiger worms though and they love manure.
All methods posted here are good but the best method for riding yourself is hydrogen peroxide…look into it urself…110% guaranteed to beat them down and keep’em down. Bti works for the short term…its bogus…itll kill them but i think they get immune to it or something. I let an infestation happen on purpose once and it only killed them for the short term…i pulled out the hydrogen peroxide(food grade 35% dilluted down to 3% then i dilluted it down further. Just do a simple search itll tell you what the % is
It worked for me!
I have some castings ready to harvest, but I know I have quite a variety of life going in there. How do I ensure that I am not adding unfriendly bugs into the equation??