Hello all,

My wife and I became plant lovers last year and bought many plants (decorative and vegetables) and love taking care of them and regrowing smaller ones and now have plants on every surface we could put one.

Last year, in summer we go a massive amounts of fruit flies? (I added an image) Which we couldn't get rid of. We tried yellow stickers, different sprays we found in Edeka. They seem to reduce the problem but not really solve it.

We also tried some worms (Nematoden) that i found while searching Google last year. I ordered some and tried them but they didn't really solve the problem. It took a while to deliver and we used them maybe few days later than we should? (I read that they can die if not stored in the fridge).

All the flies disappeared last year when it became really cold but now they are returning again. I was about to order the worms again and try it but thought I could check here if you guys have any recommendations for solutions that we can find in Germany?

by maenmallah

11 comments

  1. [Sciaridae – Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciaridae)

    I guess in one of your plants they survived. You have to constantly have yellow stickers and water your plants with a certain detergent that kills the eggs / larvae in the soil. You have to do that weekly and over a certain timeframe because of their reproduction cycle. Did you add new soil to one of your plants? Maybe the new soil was contaminated. Most of the time this is a really long fight. A solution could be to replace the soil on ALL plants hoping that the new one is not contaminated.

  2. Gelbsticker, nematoden and cover the soil of every plant with 1cm sand and don’t water to much. Water with Nematoden everytime. These are not fruitflies but Trauermücken

  4. These are not fruit flies. As mentioned yellow sticky cards should help. Go in there and ask for ‚Gelbkarten‘

  5. I went to hagebaum and got one those fly eating plants. It does the job really well. Little guy, doesn’t cost much but it atracts them and eats most of them

  6. Just mix some water, vinegar and a drop of dish soap in a glass.

    Place it near where the most fruit flies are and they will be attracted by the vinegar but will drown due to not floating on the surface as the dish soap destroys the surface tension of the liquid.

  7. My wife and i use wine/sekt corks and place ine in each plant we have and a few near our fruit bowl. No more for us.
    My wife also uses the yellow stickers for the bigger plants to thin out the bug population

  8. Those are fungus gnats (Trauermücken).

    Put neem oil into your irrigation water for one month, but very thrifty, not too much.

    They will not disapear instantly, because the oil works only at the fresh born flies in the earth. It will not kill them, but makes them infertible.

    It will take its time, but except nematodes this will help 100%

  10. Something that helped me to get rid of Trauermücken is covering the soil in your plant pots with a thick layer of bird sand. It’s like 0.65€ for a 2.5kg sack at your local dm. The small grain size creates an impenetrable barrier for the flies. They can’t lay their eggs and die off, and the ones already in the soil can’t get out.

    The downside is that for a while you’ll have to water your plants from the bottom, meaning you fill the outer pot with water and let the plant soak in the water through the holes in the bottom, in order to not disturb the sand.

    Also Gelbsticker. Granted, a big yellow piece of paper covered in dead flies won’t look very nice, but at least they get rid of the problem.

  11. Trauermücken.

    Lots of Gelbsticker. Nematodes. Covering the soil with stones or sand. Making sure the soil can breath from below usually they have their nests there. Changing the soil with a layer of stones or perlite and coffee powder ( caffeine kill the larva). Placing water traps with vinegar and soap.
    The goal should be to prevent adult flies to lay eggs.

Leave a Reply