Healthy soil for growing plants is alive, but indoor flies and crawling bugs are usually unwelcome. Here's how I get rid of gnats, flies, mites, and other small crawling/flying pests, without using any products that could get into my plants.
While many gardeners turn to chemical sprays or soil additives to combat unwanted bugs, I prefer using non-invasive methods that can't impact the plant's health, or end up in my food or medicine.
1.) Manual removal. If your garden is small, and you have the time and energy, manually remove as many bugs as you can, as often as you can. This isn't likely to solve the problem on its own, but it can stop it from getting any worse.
2.) Flying (and some crawling) insects can be trapped with sticky paper. This has no chemical impact on your soil or plants, but combats certain stages in the insect life cycle, dramatically reducing pest population.
3.) Diatomaceous earth (a dust made of crushed up fossilized sand particles) doesn't interact with plants, doesn't change your soil's pH, and doesn't damage human skin.... but it destroys most insects on contact. Mixing a bit into your soil, and sprinkling some around the edges of your containers, will deal with almost any crawling bugs, and many flies that land on the soil surface to drink or deposit eggs. Use a little prophylactically, to keep pristine gardens pristine.
4.) Be aware of new sources of infestations. Unscreened open windows and doors can allow outside bugs a chance to look for a home inside. Indoor gardens are free of predators, and often great sources of food, water, and nesting.
5.) Don't bring 'outside plants' into your indoor garden. It's usually okay to bring indoor plants outside, but bringing plants from nature (the wild) into your indoor garden is just asking for problems. Also, be aware that infestations can arrive with plants brought in as gifts, trades, or purchases from other gardeners. Inspect new additions carefully.
6.) Be careful not to overwater your soil, and try to water more deeply, less often. A constantly moist soil surface encourages insects. A fan blowing a gentle breeze over the plants can discourage pests.
7.) Add beneficial plants to your garden that naturally repel insects. Garlic and basil are a couple examples.
8.) Remove dead plant material from the garden area (down the toilet is one good solution). Don't accumulate clutter, stagnant water, unused soil, dirty pots, or anything else bugs can inhabit. Empty garbage and compost regularly. Sweep/vacuum your garden area often.
Cost
Most of the methods don't cost anything. Diatomaceous earth can be expensive, but if you do some research and calling around you'll be able to find it in large bags for just a few bucks. The finely powdered stuff is useful for dusting areas finely to prevent bugs, but the cheaper (more coarse) stuff is fine for mixing into your soil, which cuts down on fly larval stages, soil mites, and many other pests.
Fly paper is cheap, and can sometimes be found at dollar stores. You can also find easy solutions you can mix up with household ingredients, to make simple traps to combat various flies and gnats.
Soil to Oil
This is part of my 'Soil to Oil' series, which is following my 3rd crop grown fully on the Steem blockchain. The first posts are here and here. The series intends to help intermediate gardeners adapt their skills to producing high quality clean organic cannabis, in their living room, for essentially no financial cost. If you've grown tomatoes, fruit, or flowers, you won't have trouble using what you know to succeed with cannabis. This guide isn't intended for brand new gardeners, but I encourage them to follow along and start developing their green thumbs. The Super Skunk crop will be grown, harvested, and the oil will be extracted for medical use.
The natural and inexpensive methods of pest control mentioned here can be used alone or together, to handle most common household plant pests, without any risk of harm to the plant or its food/medicine.
DRutter
