For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."
how to get rid of gnats in your house 🦟
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If you're reading this, you probably have a plant or two inside your home. 🌱 Maybe it's a houseplant, or something you're overwintering, or even a windowsill herb or container vegetable you're growing indoors. It's not uncommon to see some pests around your plants this time of year, especially tiny little flies that seem to multiply each week. Less sun and cooler temperatures inevitably lead to wetter-than-usual soil, which creates the perfect playground for fungus gnats. They look like fruit flies but appear anywhere there's soil, as adult gnats lay their eggs in your potted plants so the larvae can feed on fungi and other organic material. If you look reeaaaalllly closely, you might even find some larvae in your soil. They're whitish-clear with tiny black dots on their heads, and sticky yellow traps won't work on them (but ONE thing in particular will). If their environment stays damp, their population will explode—and that can lead to weakened plants (not to mention the nuisance of having little gnats flying around your home—ugh). ​Here are 11 ways to get rid of gnats on your plants.​ (And how you can prevent them in the first place.) Free Interactive Gardening ToolsDid you know I have several interactive online tools designed to help make gardening easier? ​You can find them all on this page.​ The one you might want to start playing around with now is my Seed Starting and Planting Calendar. It'll output a personalized seed starting and transplanting chart (with dates) based on your own frost dates, so you never miss a planting window again. If you don't know what your frost date is, I've got a tool for that too. It's based on the 15-year Climate Normals data from NOAA, and unlike some other tools online, mine will give you probabilistic ranges so you can decide how much risk you're willing to take. (90% chance frost, 50% chance frost, or 10% chance frost.) Try it out and let me know what you think. 😀 (I'm currently working on a tool that will help you figure out how long to water your garden if you have a drip irrigation system, which is a question I'm asked all the time! And it's something I'm constantly experimenting with too. Stay tuned for that.) P.S. Get rid of fungus gnats for good with these 11 home remedies. P.P.S. If you're spending the weekend sorting your seed collection, use my simple spreadsheets to help you inventory and organize all your seeds, from types and colors to quantities and pack dates. Available in Airtable and Google Sheets formats ONLY. Learn how to use them here.​
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Garden Betty
For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."