Topic: Small black flies

[Barnowl]

I'm suffering from small black flies in the soil of my indoor plants. Think they might be sciarid flies. What's the best way to get rid of them. I mostly water from below but they do need feeding from the top every so often.

[daileg]

i use thos fl catcher things you hang up look terrible but they work a treat in the greenhouse

[Barnowl]

Thanks but I don't think OH will be hugely enthusiastic  :)

[reddyreddy]

you can buy a fertiliser stick in most garden centres which has an insecticide against thrip/sciarid fly it is only about 1 inch and you stick it in the soil, about £3 for a pack of 10 or so. Good luck.

[hopalong]

Earlier thread on this may be of some help

http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,48942.0.html

[caroline7758]

I had a lot of these last year and just used the sticky traps. This year as soon as I saw the first flies I decided to splash out and bought some hypoapsis, a biological control which kills the larvae, and the combination of this with the sticky traps to get the flies seems to have worked.

This iswhere I bought them from:

http://www.biowise-biocontrol.co.uk/

[Barnowl]

Many thanks to you all for the advice. I now should be able to resolve the problem  :)