My new nemesis seems to be fungus gnats. It’s not a new problem, but a recurring one that’s driving me nuts.

You wouldn’t believe the damage these little suckers have done. They ate 4 of my 5 Queen of the night tulips bulbs, so it looks like I won’t be having tulips this spring… boohoo. The left the empty shells of the tulip bulbs for me to find.

I only found out because I was wondering why they hadn’t sprouted yet. Only one of the bulbs showed some greenery peeking through the soil line, but when I disturbed the soil where the other tulips should have been, there was nothing. In my curiosity, I dug down to the level of the bulbs and uncovered just the empty shells. I could see a few wriggling larvae so I knew it was fungus gnats.

They also left holes in my calla lily leaves! Gah! The only thing they haven’t attacked yet are the liliums.

I’ve been out on the balcony every day armed with my spray bottle of pyrethrum. I spray the soil and leaves on a daily basis hoping to kill the adults before they lay more eggs in the soil. I think I’m seeing an improvement in numbers, but it’s an ongoing process. I wish I had something to knock out both adults and larvae at once.

There are organic predatory nematodes, mites and bacteria, but they’re not easy to get a hold of. The bacteria isn’t approved for use in Australia and the mites and nematodes would require shipping from another part of Australia.

I read another remedy that could work is to drench the soil and spray the foliage with hydrogen peroxide. The peroxide should kill the larvae and eggs by oxidation and give plants an added boost of oxygen around the roots. It’s meant to be a good fungicide too, something I should use on the frangipani since it’s not growing any new leaves and it’s spring.

Speaking of frangipani, I did squeeze the branch and it’s not soggy, so I’m not even sure if there’s a fungal infestation. I did dig up some of the soil and found it to be clumpy even though the soil was pretty dry. There were some white stringy bits that looks like webbing holding the soil together. I’m not sure if this is fungus in the soil or fine roots of the frangipani. Either way, it could do with a hydrogen peroxide drenching.

There’s some debate on what strength to use. Bill Munro, an advocate for the use of hydrogen peroxide on everything including himself, says 8% for gardening, some other web sites are saying say 3%. But either way, I need to find some large quantities of hydrogen peroxide to begin with!

Another beautiful sunny winter’s day. I managed to spend an hour or so outside on the balcony finishing up some of the jobs I desperately wanted to do.

I went back to the store to get another 2 glazed pots in the same style and colour of the one I bought yesterday. As they say, everything looks better in uneven numbers.

So with the new glazed pots, I potted up the tulip bulbs and the lilium bulbs. Finally! They really should have been done a couple of months ago, but oh well, everything rarely goes according to plan with me.

The rest of the plants and their soil have also been treated with pyrethrum, so I hope this will bring down the numbers of fungus gnats quite drastically. I had also bought a big plastic tub to store all the spare soil, mulch and fertilisers as a quarantine method. This is really a temporary solution as I’m still looking to purchase a mini-shed or storage locker to properly store these things. Eventually, I’d like to control the fungus gnat population with some of those parasitic nematodes, so I better start looking for them soon.

The last of the capsules of the frangipani seedlings have been removed. Out of 20 seeds, 12 have germinated. How many will ultimately survive is anyone’s guess at the moment. The biggest downer is that I only have one Firestorm seedling, so I’m going to baby that one. The other varieties (Brittany, Lurline and some mystery frangis) have 3-4 seedlings so you could say I have “spares”.

Yay, managed to get a bit of gardening done in today’s gorgeous winter sunshine.

I bought some more potting mix, a couple of indoor plastic pots, a glazed pot for the tulips, some longer garden stakes for the tomatoes and some pyrethrum concentrate. Yup, decided I couldn’t wait any longer while trying to find more organic means of controlling those pesky fungus gnats.

I managed to treat the indoor plants and seedlings with the pyrethrum, but spent a little too much time at work (yes, I work on the weekends too, such is life) so didn’t get a chance to do the outdoor plants as well.

I plan to make a lattice out of the bamboo stakes I bought today and have it up against the north facing wall on the balcony for the current and future tomato plants.

I started the process of planting the tulip bulbs I received recently. I managed to get the soil mixed and into the pot then decided to treat the soil with pyrethrum before planting the bulbs in it. Tomorrow’s going to be a lovely, sunny day again, so I’m going to spend a bit more time on the balcony finishing these jobs.

I’ve been told the little wormy things eating my frangipani seeds are fungus gnats, and my have they done some damage! I’m going to need to treat pretty much all of my plants and the soils their in.

I was advised to use pyrethrum to drench the soil. It sounds safe enough to use since it’s low toxic to humans and pets and is inactivated by sunlight. I would still prefer to use more organic control methods so I did a little bit of research and found that fungus gnats can be controlled by a predatory nematode called Steinernema feltiae and a mite called Hypoaspis miles. Now I just need to find out where I can get a hold of these creepy crawlies in Western Australia!

Otherwise, the frangipani seedlings seem to be doing well. I can see growth of new leaves between the cotyledons on many of the seedlings.

Some of the cherry tomatoes are starting to change colour too! There’s a distinct reddish tinge to many of the fruits. Make sure to see the cherry tomato gallery for the pictures!

The germination rate of the frangipani seeds were about 50% after almost a month in the soil. Some of the seedlings look very healthy and growing happily, the others look ok and only one looks a little strange with the capsule opening up but no root system or stem has developed.

I pulled out a couple of seeds from the soil to see if there’s any roots growing. Only one had roots growing, a few I couldn’t quite pull out, so I’m assuming they’ve rooted and about 3 or 4 of the frangipani seeds, have some suspicious looking worm-like looking things on them. I could’ve sworn they looked as if they burrowed into the seeds!

Needless to say I’m not very happy. I’m not even sure what they are, I thought they were nematodes, but I thought nematodes were microscopic.

Anyway, so I think I’ll try to seek out advice, but I suspect I’m going to have to destroy the seeds that haven’t germinated.

Uh oh… I got some pest problems with the (sort of) new bamboo palms I got for the office. There’s a couple of types I can see. One is insect like and light brown in colour, the other look like little black blobs. I’m not quite sure what they are, but I don’t like them.

Photo time:

The last 3 photos are some weird looking new shoots from one of the bamboo palms. I have no idea what it is.

I’m not a big fan of pesticides, so I’ll be treating this with Pest Oil which should suffocate the little buggers.