Bringing up the topic of gnats tends to conjure varying degrees of annoyance. Whether you’re an aspiring gardener, or simply taking a walk by the water during the right season, chances are you’ve noticed – or ran right into – clouds of these tiny flies that suspiciously resemble mosquitoes.
Luckily for us, gnats don’t bite, nor do they transmit or carry diseases. They’re not harmful to humans, except when it comes to the nuisance spectrum. Fungus gnats, which are the most common species of gnats, are often found infesting plants around the house, hanging around lights or commercial greenhouses, or congregating in other damp places like sink drains or garbage disposals.
Why Gnats Are Attracted to Our Plants and Home
Fungus gnats live and die quickly, with a life cycle reaching up to a grand total of about three weeks. Adults can live up to one week, spending that time laying up to 200 eggs in the top layers of moist plant soil. These eggs take a few days to hatch, after which larvae chomp away at or even burrow inside of plant roots for about a week – though they can also munch on mulch, mold, clippings, compost, or even fungi. Once they finish up their pupal stages, which takes another four days, adult gnats emerge from the soil to begin this cycle once more.
Because gnats operate on such a condensed timeline, infested house plants may often house several generations of gnats at once, according to the Pennsylvania State University. That makes it all the more challenging to get rid of them, if you do end up unwittingly bringing home a plant with gnats. This is everything you need to know about gnats and moreover, how to get rid of them safely.
