G-nats:0, Greg and the Shamrock:1
I’ve won the first battle with the evil fungus gnats. Letting the soil dry out and placing the mini bug zapper right next to the shamrock definitely did the trick. He still looks a little pitiful at the moment, not surprising considering what he’s been through.
Sadly, I won’t get to enjoy shamrock blossoms on my birthday, but I’m hoping that a nice dose of fertilizer next week will go a long way towards restoring his vigor.
The water-withholding has put a serious dent in the fungus gnat population and the mini bug zapper arrived yesterday. I set it up next to the shamrock when I got home from work today and it promptly zapped a g-nat with a satisfying “crack!”
Hopefully I can eliminate them pretty quickly, because I’m not sure how much patience I have for the ungodly racket it makes when one of the ever-present (in my kitchen) ladybugs hits the 2200 volt grid o’ death.
Sometime after I posted the pic of my happy little shamrock, I started noticing these tiny little gnats (or G-nats, as I like to say) flitting around on and near the soil. They seemed to be more numerous when the soil was dry, so I decided that more frequent watering was the answer.
The more frequent watering didn’t seem to help, so I turned to Google. Turns out, they’re fungus gnats and they thrive on too-wet soil, where they lay their eggs which then hatch into fungus (and root) eating larvae before emerging as adult G-nats to lay more eggs.
An ill-advised spraying with Safer Insecticidal Soap (they should add shamrocks to the list of plants it shouldn’t be used on) burned the leaves, so I won’t be posting more pics any time real soon.
So now I’m trying to let the soil dry enough between waterings to kill the larvae without killing the plant. The good folks at Woot.com, apparently caught wind of my plight, as the item for sale the other day was a mini indoor bug-zapper. Mine is on the way, but given the mule-train like slowness of their “SmartPost” shipping method, I may have won the G-nat war (or killed the shamrock) before it arrives.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a photo, so here you go. This little fella was waiting on the outside of my kitchen window the other morning.
Today was as close to a perfect day for a ride as you can ask for, so naturally, I went for a ride. My original “plan” was to return home by way of Hilltop Road to Fairground Road. Sadly, as I neared the point where I would turn toward Hilltop Road, my legs felt like lead and I just couldn’t talk myself into climbing the hill for which the road is named, so I decided to hop on the bike path, bypass the hill(s), and pick up Fairground Road at the Fairgrounds.
It turns out, this was a bad idea. I ride on bike paths infrequently enough that I sometimes forget the various reasons I eschew them. The reason I don’t ever ride this particular section of path during the Spring or Summer, particularly in the evening, is bugs. Vast horrible clouds of tiny little bugs. Bugs in my eyes, bugs in my ears, bugs up my nose, bugs down my throat, bugs in my hair, bugs every-fucking-where. It was like a Goddamned mile-long bug rain storm, the difference being; actual rain doesn’t make me curse like an enraged Tourette’s patient.
Thankfully, I was soon off the bike path and out of the bugs. The horror of the bugs would have been quickly forgotten were it not for the fact that they still coated me like some sort of insect breading. Mmm… insect encrusted, deep-fried cyclist!
I made it home with no further drama. The cat enjoyed playing with some of my insect stowaways while I made haste in washing the remainder off of me and attempting to blow some of the less fortunate ones out of my nasal passages.
I won’t make that mistake again any time soon (famous last words).
