Years ago I bought a pack of 60 sheets of yellow sticky traps figuring that it was enough to last a life time. I now see that the stack of sheets is running low. I’m afraid that does not bode well for my future. But until we both expire, I’ll keep plodding along.
The reason for my original purchase was to do battle with the white flies that like to infest our iris beds. Being cheap, I always cut the letter size sheets vertically into thirds and then hung these narrow strips throughout the beds every year. That technique has worked fairly well as whenever we walk through the beds, we purposely knock against the plants, the white flies fly up and zip over to the yellow strips to which they become stuck.
When LaVille mentioned that several of the plants she was propagating started to get white fly, I cut sheets into thirds and then those strips in half. I then mounted them on miniblind stakes and taped the stakes to the sides of the totes in which the plants were being raised. Well this was only partially successful as the stakes stuck to the totes, but the mini pieces of sticky sheet sometimes did not want to adhere to the stakes. The yellow sticky sheet material is flat and likes to stay that way—they didn’t want to bend around the bent stakes. Adding blue masking tape worked somewhat, but I found small metal clips worked as a last resort.
So far, pretty boring, right? Well, look at the accompanying photo. See the attached white flies? . . . No, you can’t. They are tiny, and blend right in with the yellow mini sheet. I just took a flashlight (It’s night time) and tried to count the white flies. I figure there is at least 100 on both sides of the yellow mini sheet. Look at the photo. Guess what those dark specks are? Those are fungus gnats. It’s a 2fer! After the sticky mini strips were in place for about 4 days, no flies or gnats appeared when we brushed the plants. Adults were eliminated, so the life cycle was broken.
So if you have any trouble with white flies or fungus gnats, try using these yellow sticky traps. I have to tell you though, working with these is a real pain. I mean these traps are really sticky. You can remove sticky stuff from you fingers with paint thinner.
Well, I feel foolish. I just checked Amazon and found that there are all kinds of small yellow sticky traps now available. Not only that—they actually advertise use on fungus gnats and flying aphids as well as white flies. Do I feel out of touch!
Stan, The Feeling Old Man
Capture gnats with sticky trap