Eaten Alive

My greenhouse is Mosquito Central. I keep checking over and over again for standing water in pot saucers and anywhere else I can think of and cannot find out where they are coming from! Has anyone else had this problem and solved it successfully?

X

You might try setting up a stronger cross-breeze. Mosquitos don't like wind much.

What kind of floor do you have? Is it possible you have water under your pea gravel, or the like? Those obnoxious little insects can find enough water to breed in the most unlikely places.

Also, have you considered putting up a few bat houses outside? Bring some bats in and the mosquitos woun't feel quite so comfortable around there.

If all else fails, bomb your greenhouse with a fogger or two. Pull out any really sensitive plants & just fog the whole thing. That should creep into whatever water you have that you can't find.

Alternately, have you tried one of those propane-driven machines for mosquitos? My MIL loves hers for both mosquitos and gnats and the CO2 would help you plants, too, if you have the space for it :-)

An infestation in some standing water beneath the surface of the gravel would have been my guess, too. SB

You can also put mosquito screens on the outside of the shutter fans. Never thought about it before, but i don't remember ever seeing a mosquito in the grhouses before

Me either. What about some standing water just outside of the GH, from which mosquitos are getting pulled in by the fan?

Thanks for all your replies .. its a small greenhouse 9 x 6 with no fans .. I checked under the gravel but couldn't find any standing water since weed cloth is under the gravel. I really would like to set a bug bomb off in there but it's not good for the polycarbonate panels. I did find one small pool of larvae in water an unfurling canna, but that didn't seem like enough to support the population I have in there! I am going to stick my box fan in there though .. hopefully they won't like the wind. The only other source of water in there is my bubbler, but I have never seen mosquito larvae in it since the water is constantly moving. I'm considering burning a citronella candle in there .. would the plants be bothered by it?

X

try the fan first.

Is it tight? If no mosquitos can get in and you have them it's inside. Obvious I know but they could well be coming from outside.
Look carefully around your yard.
A teaspoon of water is all that's needed.

If tight.
Are any of your pots self watering? They are notorious Mosquito homes.
Water in the window channels? Bench legs?
Where the floor meets the GH? Inside and out.
Look under the top of your benches.
Water everything look to see if it's pooling in some odd spot.

A Mosquito coil will not hurt the plants.
You will though need to leave the door open so they can escape.
A bomb will not work. It will only kill the adults.

Ric

I used to have quite a gnat problem, but I got a bunch of nepenthes pitcher plants, venus fly traps and several drosera sundew carnivorous because I couldn't seem to find any pesticides that would do the trick. Surprisingly I see very few gnats now. I don't know how these guys would do with skeeters, but I doubt they discriminate.

Just a thought......

Will it hurt the plants to burn a citronella candle in the greenhouse?

Jesse

X ~ You might move some of these guys in... They will enjoy the meal and assist in control... : ))

My greenhouse is stuffed full of anoles. Here is a picture of one that is just born. Can't be more than a few hours old.

X

Oh hes so cute! Did they just wonder in there or did you buy some and put them in there? I have the yellow sticky cards in my greenhouse for the gnats. Try a fan that oscillates (spelling) to reach all areas. Do you pull any outside air in at all? If so are the intakes covered with a screen?

Growing Bromeliads with overhead misting is like asking mosquitos if they're hungry. I have this problem every year. As others have stated it only takes a tiny bit of standing water for mosquitos to breed. I have had fairly good luck this year putting "Mosquito Dunks" in all my buckets (small pieces) and use this water to top off the Bromeliad tanks. This product is a small donut shaped object containing Bacillus thuringiensis that kills the larvae. I also use these dunks in my backyard pond.
Dave.

I have a whole colony of anoles and skinks that live in the greenhouse year round. Since it is kept from freezing and gets up into the 80's in the day time, they don't hibernate. All the pots in there are perfect places for laying eggs as well, so I am very careful when I stir up a pot not break any eggs. I once had one hatch out in my hand. It was awesome. It sat in my hand for 20 minutes while it dried off. I then stuck it in a bush and it immediately zeroed in on a bug.

X

Thats awesome. You described it great too. I just have spiders and mice every now and then in mine. So far no snakes!

I have too many snakes in my yard for mice and rats thank goodness, only those nasty tree rats with the busy tails .. I keep telling my black snake with the bad attitude to go after them but I've never seen him eating one .. that black snake is about 3.5 feet long and is one cranky snake, I'm always careful to carry my loaded hose on jet when I'm in the yard in the early mornings or evening, if he's bored or hungry he'll literally chase me .. I'll hit him with the hose on jet and that usually backs him off .. usually but not always .. in desperation once, I did a crocodile hunter manoever on him by grabbing his tail and threw him over the fence on the upswing .. he turned around, slithered thru the fence and came for me .. I retreated into the house .. by this time of year, anoles outside the greenhouse are getting sparse because the garter snakes and black snakes eat them. Since there is a screen door on the greenhouse they can't get in there so the greenhouse is sort of an anole/skink haven. there is a garter snake that will come watch me when I'm digging cause he knows I'll throw him any grubs I find. He's been around a couple of years now .. kind of like an old friend. When I see him in the spring I know it's warm enough to plant out seedlings.

X

lol...great story you should write books

Yeah! You should write books, xeramtheum! Around here, its hard to keep snakes alive long enough to observe what they are up to. A few weeks ago, I heard my dogs letting loose in the back yard. When I investigated, they were watching a snake climbing up the cornerboard of the house with a mouse in tow. What a ruckus! Everybody wanted that mouse--but the snake was not distracted winding up in the attic over my kitchen with his catch. Now there are some bad snakes here--copperheads that propagate themselves and take over old barns and outbuildings. But they all have got a bad name, and if they show themselves are likely to be killed--just for being a snake. I doubt if any snake ever dies of old age in this part of the country. Now, what that has to do with mosquitos I do not know.

Since I have a mature overgrown drainage ditch behind me, I also have a water moccasin that visits from time to time. Everytime I see him he makes a hasty retreat, the reason being, the first time I saw him he got things thrown at him and every other time I saw him I'd either hit him with water, my shoes, once kinda gently with the flat end of a shovel on his rear and chased him spraying 409 in his face and just about anything throwable I could find, always running toward him throwing stuff. It took him about a month to learn that when the back door opens it's time for him to leave. I see him in my yard when I'm not in it. He is probably responsible for keeping most of the rodents out of my yard. I just wish he'd go after those dratted tree rats.

Unfortunately my cranky blacksnake, like a cat (if you don't own cats, you learn very quickly never to hit a cat, they will come after you with teeth and claws), just got ticked off and wanted to get even when he got that kind of treatment.

X

Well, we just found a 7 ft long snake skin in our cellar this morning! fun! We had a bad problem with snakes in the house when we moved in this old farm house. We found a baby in our bedroom once. We took it to the zoo. The guy asks "Where are the others? This fella was just born!!" They are black rat snakes. I almost stepped on a black one in the yard with orangish yellowish circles going down his back. We also have a Ky Scarlet snake that closely resembles the deadly Florida coral snake. Whenever I see him a repeat "Red next to black, venom lack, Red next to yellow kill a fellow!!" oh well. gotta love em.