My house plants are infested with fruit flies and I was tild that powdered glass sprinkled on the potting soil will get rid of them. Does anyone Know who sells it

Hi Dian,

What you likely have are fungus gnats, that look and behave an awful lot like fruit flies. Their larva do indeed thrive in moist potting soil. I've never heard of the powdered glass idea, but I'd be leary of using it, or trying to re-pot something after using it.

If you let the surface of the soil in the pots dry out between waterings, that will decrease the numbers quite a bit. Similarly if you cover the surface of the soil with fine gravel, it stays too dry for the fungus gnats to successfully lay their eggs.

I still get the odd gnat around, but not as many as I used to. And they are fairly harmless, from what I've heard.

I had a bad investation once that I suspect originated in the vermicomposter. To get rid of the flys I set a trap of vinager in a cup covered with a peice of saran wrap, with a small hole poked in the center (an elastic will hold the saran wrap on better). This worked extremly well, the flys were attracted to the vinager and crawled into the cup where they became trapped and eventually drown. I placed the cup on the composter and one more in the highly infested kitchen. In about a week there were significantly fewer flys and in 2 they were gone. As nancy stated I keep the compost drier now and have had no reinfestions...yet!