market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Market Farming
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- From: KAKerby AT aol.com
- To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Help...Fungus gnats?
- Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 09:07:43 -0400 (EDT)
Sorry this is a day later, but I figured someone else would answer and then
no one answered. My hort. mentor has used preying mantis for a number of
years now specifically to control fungus gnats in the greenhouse, on young
tomato, pepper, and herb plants. This particular control method wasn't in
your list of "already tried", so I thought I'd mention it. It's something
that needs to be timed such that the small mantids are hatching out of their egg
cases (fascinating procedure to watch BTW) right when the fungus gnat
population is about to get going. For us, that started about a week ago
but our season is a tad behind with our coldest-April-on-record (boo
hiss).
Just to give you a scale of magnitude, our main production greenhouse is
24x48, chock full of seedlings now in advance of our first big sale this
Saturday, along with a smaller seedling greenhouse that's 8x12. My mentor
bought in 10 mantid egg cases about six weeks ago to produce approximately 500
mantids if I'm remembering the statistics correctly. Those mantids will
distribute themselves around the areas in which they hatch, so you can put the
egg cases where you need the adults to end up. Those mantids will survive
in those greenhouses for the rest of the season, sometimes eating each other,
until at the end of the season she'll only have a handful of big ones
left.
I don't know if you can get mantid egg cases that are a lot closer to
hatch-out so that you could start controlling your fungus gnat problem
sooner. Maybe ask around your local area and see if anyone already
has some egg cases going, which could also provide faster
relief. Hope that helps.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at
frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html
In a message dated 5/2/2011 12:45:57 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
sora AT coldreams.com writes:
> Having a pretty severe problem with fungus gnats on tomato starts in a |
-
[Market-farming] Help...Fungus gnats?,
sora, 05/02/2011
- Re: [Market-farming] Help...Fungus gnats?, alicia best, 05/03/2011
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
-
Re: [Market-farming] Help...Fungus gnats?,
KAKerby, 05/03/2011
- Re: [Market-farming] Help...Fungus gnats?, William H Shoemaker, 05/03/2011
- Re: [Market-farming] Help...Fungus gnats?, KAKerby, 05/03/2011
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