Safer Brand 5026 Houseplant Sticky Stake Insect Traps for Indoor Plants - Controls Fungus Gnats, Whiteflies, Midges, Thrips, Fruit Flies, and Black Flies - 1 Pack, 7 Traps

We live in Oklahoma and for some reason FUNGUS GNATS love it here. When we moved to Oklahoma from California I mistook them for smaller fruit flies, but upon further investigation through google pics I found out EXACTLY what the little annoying boogers were. If you have potted plants in your home you have to deal with these darn gnats! The key is to NOT over water your plants because they are attracted to water & watered soil. Once they have laid their eggs in the soil their larvae will eat at the roots of your plants and kill your plants sucking the life out of them. I had lost several plants before I caught onto what they were doing.....once again I found out via google! There is a method of killing the eggs & larvae using a mixture of 1 part peroxide to 3 parts water if you're having trouble with them killing your plants (Google for the info) but this only kills the eggs and larvae not the adults, for the adults I use the sticky traps. The peroxide & water mixture won't hurt your plants because after the peroxide is done fizzing it turns to harmless water. I like hearing the fizzing knowing it is killing those little monsters! Even if you don't have plants in your home they love any spots where there's water around such as bathrooms and kitchens. Lord knows how many of these stupid bugs we've swallowed in our sleep because they are also attracted to the carbon dioxide we exhale. Yum! Anyways, I didnt want to use pesticides in my home because the air quality inside homes is already poor enough as it is and I am sensitive to chemicals . I found these were rated pretty good with Amazon customers for being nontoxic traps. They do not have any attractant on them, but the fact that they are yellow attracts the gnats to them naturally. The gnats like to crawl and hop on the surface of the soil so I fold the tabs in half and put it down on soil like a tent and have also hung them over stems of my plants. I have also used the little spikes they come with. It works for me either way. When you see my pic you know why I rated them 5 stars. To all those in the fight against these evil menaces...I salute you!!!

These are working great! I like to rescue dead/dying plants from my local store. I'll bring them into my office and take care of them until they are rehabilitated then relocate them to other parts of our office or friends/family. Well, I brought in a miniature rose bush in a pot a few weeks ago and a couple of weeks later noticed I had gnats in the office. My first control attempt was to stop watering for about a month. That didn't solve the problem - the gnats had migrated over to some larger plants with bigger pots that retain moisture longer than the smaller ones do. My second control attempt was to hang a sticky fly ribbon from the ceiling over the weekend. When I returned that Monday there was easily 30 gnats stuck to the ribbon. That's when I knew the gnat issue was bigger than it looked like - I had only seen a few gnats but apparently, it was a full blown infestation. Since it's a bit unsightly to leave fly strips hanging from the ceiling ANYWHERE, especially an office, I opted to give these a try. They are more discreet and you can leave them staked in the back of your potted plants pretty much full time without anyone going "ew" when they see it. It's sort of like a little sticky flower! The first weekend after having these guys staked in all of my plants yielded massive results. They caught EASILY 100+ gnats. I had NO idea there was that many! I'd only ever seen maybe 2 at a time. I'm guessing it only takes a few to lay hundreds of eggs in the soil, so I am extremely glad I got these in when I did or I might have had a cloud of gnats flying around the office. Since some of the sheets filled up, I am re-ordering a few of these kits now. When the reproductive cycle breaks and I stop catching gnats on them, I intended to keep every other plant staked as a maintenance/prevention measure for future issues. Update: This completely resolved my gnat issue after a week or two. I still keep the plants staked with the strips and every so often I’ll see something stuck to it... having gone through that gnat explosion nightmare I’m extremely appreciative that these are preventing a repeat infestation.

••Do you have fungus gnats? •• If you have indoor plants, probably so! Fungus gnats are the most common type of small indoor fly. They’re small, black, and bad at flying(!) because their wings are too delicate for their dumb bodies. They tend to walk or fly clumsily, which makes them fairly easy to catch. They live in the soil of potted plants. If you have tiny black flies AND young plants, seedlings or cuttings, or any potted plants that were packaged and delivered via mail (read: got an extra big drink of water before being bundled up for shipping), you almost certainly have fungus gnats. ••Why is this happening??!!•• Immature or larval (*gag*) fungus gnats thrive in damp soil. It is normal for soil or potting mix to contain some baby bugs, but the larvae—>flying menace infestation thing only kicks off when soil is OVERWATERED. Go by the feel of the soil rather than a watering schedule to best avoid overwatering (and gnats!). For most common houseplants, you want to be able to stick your finger down 3-5cm (1-2”) into the soil and pull it out clean, like when you use a toothpick to test a cake. Check on your plants every week, and if your finger is covered in dirt, don’t add any water. Check more frequently when anything in your plants’ environment changes: the seasons, the temp/humidity of the rooms they live in, new potting soil/repotting, etc. ••Great for next time, but erm...help•• Fungus gnats are attracted to the color yellow, and the adhesive on these Sticky Stakes will trap them before they have a chance to lay more eggs. A female fungus gnat lays 300 eggs in her 1 week life, so you can see the benefit in trapping as many as you can ASAP. You need more than you think you will, but I find this brand affordable. The adhesive is super sticky, which makes them very effective (but if you get one stuck to your plant’s leaves or your hair just cut your losses. Literally). **There’s a trick to using the yellow stickies!** Lay the sticky paper horizontally across the soil of your houseplants, sticky-side down. That’s the trick. Cover the soil with sticky-down yellow traps. This method lets you trap the grown gnats as soon as they emerge from the soil, before they’ve had the chance to take flight into your house and harass you. They still work on the stakes, but it’ll take longer to get the infestation under control bc not every gnat will fly to the trap. To rid your house/plants of fungus gnats even faster, in addition to the Sticky Stakes get a bag of diatomaceous earth to help 1) dry the soil right away, 2) desiccate some of the gnat eggs, and 3) make it harder to accidentally overwater in the future. TL;DR: IF YOU HAVE FUNGUS GNATS, THE YELLOW PAPER IN THIS PRODUCT WORKS GREAT WHEN PLACED HORIZONTALLY (STICKY-SIDE DOWN) ACROSS SOIL.

These work great! My two chronically infested plants were immediately loaded with gnats. I am also going to try to kill the larvae by pouring a hydrogen peroxide / water mixture onto the soil (per a website guide I found). But the little guys flying around all get caught by the trips. However, I had to figure out my own way to set the traps. They are sticky and awkward and could be better designed, but once you have the little plastic stakes loaded they work great, so here's what i came up with: I take small squares of tape (masking, electrician's, just not Scotch -- it won't stick well enough), fold the strips sticky-side-out as directed, and TAPE them closed just at the base. This holds them together and adds just enough thickness that they will stay in the clips better in the plastic stakes. If does make your fingers a little sticky, but it washes off easily. Here are two photos of how I tape them, and then two photos of how many gnats I catch!

I would post an after picture of how effective these were but feared it would gross people out as the first few uses of these in my rubber tree plant managed to collect so many of those fungus gnat flies that I used gloves to pull it out to replace the sticky part. I usually find I'm doing battle with those little annoying gnats a few times a year - usually when I overwater by mistake - and this year, decided I wasn't going to try a more aggressive approach. I knew I needed to wipe out the larvae in the soil, but I also wanted to kill all the adults who were pro-creating. I stuck three of these in my plant over the course of the past month and my gnat problem is like 95% gone. I did use neem oil in conjunction with this and I think it was a good tactic. My plant remained healthy the entire time I used them. They are discreet, I was able to push them in far enough to sit just below the rim of my pot. The cost is so inexpensive for all the sticky pads you get, that i will probably just keep them in year round.

I goofed! I didn't know you could (or should) sterilize new potting dirt fresh from the hardware store before adding it to a small indoor garden. I'm now older, wiser, and dealing with a fungal gnat infestation. In two weeks, I've caught 25 gnats on these yellow suckers. I'm using all of them in a 6-8 sqft indoor garden. That's even after I cut way back on watering, a measure the mint and bell peppers aren't too happy about. I know that sounds like a success story, but it isn't sufficient: the emerging adults avoid capture long enough to lay eggs. The situation has improved, but I'll have to use gnatrol or other means to finish the job. These are SO very sticky that woe betide any plant that brushes up against it. It's quite like sticking your tongue to the frozen flag pole, I'm afraid. Any dirt that splashes up also sticks. This doesn't *sound* surprising, but I'm continually surprised by how often one of the leaves I try to carefully keep out of the way gets stuck and rips away. Conclusion: this helps, and could be useful to keep a nuisance (i.e., fruit flies) from being too bothersome. For more harmful fliers like fungal gnats, however, you'll have to use it in conjunction with other methods or skip this and head straight for the larger guns. I'm glad I tried it, but I'm moving on.

I recently potted two new houseplants in organic potting mix from Lowes. We started noticing more and more fungus gnats until they were pretty much out of control. When I accidently inhaled one, and then ate another that landed on my food on the same day (FYI they taste exactly like dirt) I declared a state of emergency and ran out and purchased a natural spray from Home Depot (Dr Earth) I only ended up using that for two days because it smelled disgusting, it was made from garlic and rosemary oils etc but it just smelled strongly of old garlic. I had to burn scented candles whenever I used it and it wasn't controlling the gnats anyhow unless I actually sprayed the gnats directly. Finally I came to Amazon to buy another spray and saw these Sticky Stakes and decided to give them a try. One week later, these traps are disgustingly yet satisfyingly filled with gnats. I am still seeing them flying occasionally but have high hopes in another week or two they will be eradicated completely. One trap accidently dropped off the stake and onto the soil. I left it there and discovered it was capturing all the lazy ones arrogantly wandering around on the soil, so now I have one on a stake and one on the soil in each houseplant. See my gross gnat annihilation photo! Even worse, the pic shows one trap only. I have two each in the two pots the gnats originated in, one each in my orchid pots and one each in my other houseplants, and they are all covered with gnats. At the same time as I purchased these stakes, I purchased an eco spray (Safe for indoor plants) from another Amazon seller. It hasn't even arrived yet, but when it does I may give a couple of sprays to each plant just to kill the stubborn ones, then will buy another pack of these traps for good measure. If you have a fungus gnat problem, don't hesitate to buy these!! I can now breathe AND eat inside my own house confidently again!

Yep, they work great on fungus gnats. Four stars because they are so overpriced. 7 small stickies with stakes which you'll have to keep purchasing - no sticky only option. It's also outrageous for anyone to charge more than $1 first class postage for these. Haven't tried other brands like Olsen but Amazon reviews clearly show they aren't as effective. Still looking for a less expensive DIY option. Folks, don't even bother with petroleum jelly hacks as they don't work well. And rubber cement and spray on adhesive will not stay tacky. UPDATE: I have subsequently tried the Sticky Traps from Viagrow - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CAV7P1Y - which are more cost effective. I've only caught a couple of gnats because most of them were already caught by the Safer strips but I presume by the stick that these are equally effective. However, the Safer brand is superior for indoor growing. 1) The glue used in Viagrow is stringy and difficult to remove from skin (although leaves that get stuck can carefully be peeled way, unlike the Safer traps 2) The panels are very large and it is not easy to cut them down in size if you want them in pots due to how the two panels separate. You CAN use a razor blade but again be prepared for glue on hands. SECOND UPDATE: With some practice I have found the Viagrow to be more a flexible solution after all. Larger panels that can also be cut to size as desired. WAY more cost effective.

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Very happy. Buy with confidence!

These work very well! I’ve used a few other methods to help get rid of these flies, and nothing has worked until these! My only issue was I didn’t have enough to catch all the flies! Haha. So I’m ordering more. Highly recommended!