Nature and Gardening

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All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.

See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.

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Would a venus fly trap help deal with house gnats? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by kbyanyname@beehaw.org to c/greenspace@beehaw.org

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I've got several small houseplants in my home office, and I really like having them around. I'm still pretty new to taking care of them altogether, though, and we've gotten dozens of tiny house gnats now. I've put up sticky traps and tried to use some pest control in the potted soil. But would a small venus fly trap be able to help here?

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[–] frogfruit@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As far as carnivorous plants go, I have had more success with butterworts. Sundews are also good. Venus flytraps are considered harder to grow in general and harder to keep alive indoors without manual feeding.

[–] dragynbob@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can confirm sundews, specifically the commonly found Drosera capensis is very easy to care for and should be good at catching bugs as long as they land on the tentacles

[–] BarCart@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Chiming in to double confirm! Sundews/ Drosera/ "Death-by-lollipop-hugging" are super fun and cute and will go to war on insects. I've also had great luck with growing lowland and highland Nepenthes, tropical pitcher plants, indoors. Carnivorous plants are sometimes a little picky about temperature and humidity, especially the colder-climate ones that require dormancy periods, but there are some really rewarding and fairly forgiving ones.

Fixing my neighbor's trash can problem was what I needed to solve my fly infestation a couple summers ago, but my apartment bog ab-so-lutely racked up a ton of kills during the war.

Pro-tip: Carnivorous plants usually evolved in some nutrient-lean areas and can be pretty sensitive to the salts and minerals in tap water. A Total Dissolved Solids meter is cheap and helpful for double checking to make sure you aren't going to run into trouble. Some people don't have to worry about it, some do. I have a still for distilling water at home, lots of people rig up rain catchment systems, or buy reverse osmosis water at the store. There are options.

[–] Beegzoidberg@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the info! I ordered a sundew and I'm very excited for it to arrive.