Monday, January 16, 2012

Controlling Fungus Gnats - Ensuring That Your Hydroponic Garden Is Safe From These Pests

Hydroponics is a very popular strategy of growing crops as it makes sure that plants are healthier and better nourished. If you are a hydroponic cultivator then you'll face your biggest problem controlling fungus gnats. These insects are especially threatening for hydroponically grown plants because their larvae find the watery growing medium to be the ideal place to live. If you don't take the necessary steps to control these fungus gnats you will notice a large number of tiny flies all over the place followed by the sudden death of your plants.

You want to try out different ways of controlling fungus gnats because one methodology alone might not give you the result you need. You can hardly afford to take any possibilities here because your crop will die out if you do not protect them well. At the same time, you have to be careful about the kind of insecticides you use if your crop is supposed to be sold because plenty of the chemical products available will make your produce unfit for human consumption.

One of the simplest things you might do to control the number of fungus gnats in your garden is to prevent the growth of algae in the watery medium your plants are in. You must ensure that the growing medium is dried out occasionally so that algae don't grow there. You need to also prune away all dead and excessive organic material so that nothing can fall into the growing medium. You should also utilize screens to keep these little insects away from the area where your plants are being grown. You may also use yellow sticky traps to keep these gnats in hand.

If you are forced to use chemical products to keep these pests in order then you must ensure you use products that are approved by the particular government departments especially if you are using hydroponics to cultivate produce for human consumption. Find out about what products you might use and apply them to the plants as well as the growing medium in the prescribed manner. Actually, you must be careful about how you apply these chemicals so you don't harm yourself in any manner. Controlling fungus gnats is really easy so long as you use a mixture of these three very efficient methods and change the emphasis of each technique from time to time.



Article by Rizvana Abdul

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