How to Rid Your Soil of Bugs

Video Transcript

"Hi, John, Paradise Palm here in Salt Lake City, Utah on the behalf of Expert Village.com. A really, really, really common problem with house plants in general, and we hear this all the time, particularly in office environments. People say, "I have a plant with bugs. They're not on the plant but they're down here in the soil. They look like mosquitoes or fruit flies." Basically, again, we're kind of bug free here in our store, but if you notice anywhere when your watering your plant and, or in and around the plant you have little no-seeing bugs that look like mosquitoes or fruit flies. They fly to your eyes, your ears, your nose, sources of light such as a computer screen, and also the plant, it's called a fungus gnat. They are a very common houseplant pest. They're not really of any harm to the plant, but they live in the soil column and you want to be able to find out if you have them and what do you do about them without having to throw your plant away. Ideally, once you've watered your plant, or after you've watered it, or when your watering again, disturb the soil layer with your fingers. If you see anything flying above, or around, or crawling in the soil, you want to, after you've watered, spray it with a houseplant insecticide. Again, after you've watered. And, also, in the drain pan below, you can also stick pennies, or copper pennies or copper wire which will alter the chemistry of the saucer below so they do not like to live down in there. If you can disturb the soil layer after you've watered, spray it with the insecticide, put copper in the drain pan below, do this on a repeated basis until they subside. You can often get rid of them entirely, within a month's period or less."