I've recently taken up the hobby of plants particularly succulents, but I do have an Ivy and Orchid. On Friday I picked up a few new plants one being a string of pearls. I was just replanting it along with my other new plants and noticed little small bugs like fruit flies running around, only a few. I repotted in a pot with new dirt. I then read up on them an added some potato and around the infected plant I put sticky yellow paper. Im worried about then risk to my other plants ? I'd be really sad if they died :( Is there anything else I can do? Thanks.
Hi BabyOrchid, What do you mean when you say you added potato around the infected plant? Sciaridae are small flies that look like fruit flies. They lay their eggs on moist soil, where their larvae develop and eat the root hairs and small roots of plants. They are very common and usually don't cause much of a problem on mature plants when their populations are low. The larvae need the soil to be moist in order to develop, so the first step to controling their populations is change your watering management to allow the soil to dry slightly between watterings (you don't want your plants to wilt either). When the soil dries, the larvae inside are less likely to survive and grow into adults. Drying the soil only kills the Sciaridae in the larval stage, so the eggs, the pupa and the adults will still be alive. This works particularly well if the plants can be wattered and then the soil allowed to dry at the same time. Over a few weekls, with proper watering management, you should see their numbers drastically decrease. Since it sounds like you only have a handful of plants, just changing your wattering habits should be enough to keep their populations low or to eliminate them alltogether. In my case, I have about 50 plants and frequently get new ones (sometimes acompanied by Sciaridae). I manage the watering as best as I can but since I have so many plants and often get new ones, its very dificult to eradicate them. In a case like mine, an other thing you can do is buy insectivorous plants like a Drosera. The water management and having a few insectivorus plants helps keep the Sciaridae populations very low on my plants. Hope this helps you!
