Some info about the fungus gnats with life-cycle:

Susan,
Never used the alcohol on scale bugs but will try it the next time I see any. Don't realy have that issue with scale bugs but do appear from time to time and take action asap.

Thanks for the heads up.

Picture in my post 1 of dark portuguese its the first picture.
Now 12 days later.
This was something i was experimenting with - a piece of scion not from last season growth but the season before that.
It rooted fast in my zip lock food container and i planted it in my mix afterwards.
Last week it was watered with rain water mixed S. thrive and its doing well so far passing my most of my other current season scion currently growing and thickness of green stems .
I did notice roots are starting to peak out of the drain holes.
My cuttings are now used to being in plast bin without cover for about a week or so.
Enjoy

Has anyone used the No Pest Strips to combat fungus gnats?  I can't remember the name of the insecticide in them, but they worked well when I had my birds, at keeping the little flies and moths down when seed would come with the seeds.

noss

Last season  before that i tried similar comes in a tube you take out and un roll.
I hung them under my model train layout where my grow light is 6 of them which for me was easy as they come with a thumb tack.
So i had 6 in a circular fashion around cutting and it gets a bunch but does not stop the process of them . I should have used the dunk pellets along with the strips and maybe break there cycle of laying eggs.

But

No big deal for me though this season as i have no Knats at all afer 60 days and plants are doing fine with what i'm doing.
Keeping fingers crossed but i think i will be fine.

Martin looking good I see your up to your old tricks lol. I recently bought two bags of the Miracle grow Professional potting mix and its been a nightmare with the gnats. As soon as I opened the bag I noticed those darn things flying out of the bag. Is this common with miracle grow soil's? Good soil to root cuttings but the gnats is a big turn off.

Nelson i did same with miracle grow in past.
What i did was painstakinly put  little by little in oven to kill anything in the soil .
It did not work.
Then i got brainstorm why use oven nuke em in the microwave
did not work.
Miracle grow worked great for me outdoors amended when i used it in my big containers for many years and plants grew well and thrived.
I have moved on though and no longer use it.
Im also will be trying something else again this season for fun in some of the containers when i go to root prune them in late winter.

Thanks Martin, I agree the only reason I bought those two bags was because I had no soil and that was on sale really cheap for some bare root plants I had received. I have repotted all those plants since with new soil Pro-Mix but those darn buggers are still flying around  in the office. I will spray a whole can of raid tonight before I leave hopefully that does the trick and dosent kill my little baby plants. 2 Pests I hate is Fungus Gnats & Spyder mites boy are they a pain.

I could not stop gnats from appearing but I did two things to control its population and damage:
1. I do not use a pot size smaller than 32 oz (common deli size) for rooting any more. I believe this bigger size distributes the gnat es activities and damage over a bigger mass of rooting medium; and secondly
2. I use 'Window Fly Trap (by PIC)' with pre-baited glue traps. Yes it catches them in numbers and reduce the population so much that you don't see too many in the big plastic container green-house. They are not eliminated but reduced to a good extent.
I have not lost good cuttings this year but only those cuttings which I predicted to have minor chance of successful rooting because of the visible lack of vitality of the cuttings and not because of gnats.

Sometimes ago there were many posts about Schultz soil mix that it was causing 'fungus gnats' both here and on GW site. I also had problem with Schultz mix at that time and have since moved to Pro-Mix but still get the gnats. So some soil may cause it early and more than others but these bugs find their way into the greenhouse. Here is some discussion on the other soil related to gnats:
http://figs4funforum.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3370957&highlight=schultz

Soils inherently have gnat larvae or eggs, it's the nature of the beast. It varies from batch to batch, brand to brand depending on manufacture process, and even region to region because some brands source what they bag locally to cut down on costs.

The eggs require moist soil/mix to hatch. Excessive FGs can be a sign of overwatering or improper watering. If the top centimeter of your mix in your cup is wet, you are making it easy for them to lay eggs and multiply with little work. If the top remains dry, they need to muscle through layers of mix to get to lay eggs.

I have found that using soil-less potting "mixes" instead of potting "soils" helped drastically to reduce FGs in my rooting endeavors. I also found that keeping a small oscillating fan blowing over my cups helps - if they can't land, they can't lay eggs - obviously not helpful if you root in bins; and the fan will wick moisture from the soil. Finally, I found that less potting mix = less FGs, so now I'm using a mix of mostly perlite with very tiny fraction of potting mix (like 85% perlite/15% mix)

Your mileage may vary.

Hey Martin how often have you been watering that plant? I have had issues in the past where I have over watered newly rooted cuttings and killed them so now I always second guess myself and try to keep it a bit more on the dryier side but have also noticed that by doing this the cuttings takes longer to really take off. Do you use a moisture meter or anything like that?

Hi Nelson,
call me old school i just never used any meters like water moisture, ph meters and such.
When it comes to watering i go by feel of container weather its those 4 inch pots you see or all the way up to 30 gallon pots .

What cracked me up the other day i saw a sun meter, it tells you if your plants are getting maximum sun in location.
Now please excuse expression but
how much of a doo fiss can one be when it comes to sun exposure and its location in ones yard?

I can understand some new folks when it comes to watering and not yet knowing when to until they get a feel for the weight of container but not knowing about where to place plant for maxium sun ?
Is society getting that dumb or lazy about the sun ?
If so like Mr. T used to say - "i pity the fool"  ; )

Martin, I do the same thing, JD and I talked about this a while back on the forum I think.  Like I just recommended to 71GTO in his post a minute ago - if you really want to understand how much water is too much, take two equal size containers and fill them with dry potting mix.  Leave one dry, then wet the other completely.  Life each container to feel the weight difference.  If your pot ever feels halfway as heavy as the waterlogged pot, you're overwatering.  It should feel - at most, I think - around 1/4 - 1/3 as heavy as the wet pot.

I also think it's a good exercise for people to mix the wet and dry soil together till it's fluffy and get a feel for it - your soil should never be wetter than the resulting product, and even then, it's on the verge of being too wet.

Oh - and I couldn't agree with you about society becoming too dumb or lazy ;)  Technology is great and everything, but at some point you gotta scratch your head at the gimmicks out there that are supposedly saving us time.  Besides ... the sun's rotation shifts.... so what you may pull from the meter one year could be drastically different two years later....