Have you ever noticed a tiny little gnat out of the corner of your eye while you’re siting at your desk drafting emails? They’re so small yet SO distracting…and it seems to be coming from your office plant? Yep, that would be a fungus gnat. Unfortunately they can be so pesky to treat but fortunately, they’re very common among tropical plants and we have a solution. This year especially, we’ve noticed an influx of bugs amongst our customer’s plants. Where did they come from? And why do they hang out around my plants? Well, these questions go hand in hand. Fungus gnats thrive in moist environments, aka indoor plants. Soil is an ideal home for these pests to lay their eggs, and the larvae stay sustained from the bacteria and fungus living in the soil. It may take a few weeks to notice them disappear after treatment, since their lifecycle is three weeks, but were here to help get your office back to bug free!
At Office Plants, we have an entire protocol to eliminate these little guys, and don’t worry, it’s all natural. First things first, we start the treatment off by doing a full plant investigation. Our crew will walk through the entire office space to determine the source of the gnats. Are they coming from one plant? Multiple plants? Someone’s personal plant collection/ cubicle greenhouse? (we love our fellow plant connoisseurs, but they can be the culprit!) Sometimes the best way to know for surer is by placing yellow sticky traps throughout all of the plants- super helpful, but not a solution FYI!
From there, we use an all natural pesticide treatment on the affected areas, totally safe indoors. If a plant is severely infested, we’ll remove it from the office and bring it to our warehouse in quarantine until the problem has resolved. Sometimes this process takes multiple weeks. Think of fleas for example. You give your fur baby flea treatment and “immediately” it kills all the fleas, BUT sometimes there’s flea eggs hiding in your favorite area rug and all of a sudden they’re back, and your ankles are itchy. It can take several rounds of flea treatment to get relief, and same goes for fungus gnat treatment. On average, a female fungus gnat can lay approximately 100 to 300 eggs during her lifespan of about seven to ten days. Yuck!
Typically within two weeks to a month post treatment, your office should be free of fungus gnats! We take pride in treating your plants in a timely manner to keep both you and your green desk friends happy.
Adult Fungus Gnat
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