I visited a rooftop garden in Brooklyn last week and saw something scary

I went to check out a neighbor's balcony garden in Williamsburg and ALL their tomato plants had these tiny black bugs crawling everywhere. Turns out they brought in some soil from a local nursery that was infested with aphids and now it spread to 3 other balconies on their floor. Have any of you dealt with a bug outbreak that came from store bought potting mix?

2 comments

2 Comments

victor_perry901mo ago

Soil from nurseries is a gamble honestly. I had a similar thing happen with some pepper plants last year. The bagged mix looked fine but turned out to be full of fungus gnats. Took me weeks to get rid of them with sticky traps and letting the soil dry out between waterings. You really gotta check the soil before you bring it inside or onto a balcony.

rubybarnes1mo ago

the soil from nurseries is a gamble" - man @victor_perry90 you hit the nail on the head. My friend Carly got a bag of organic potting mix from a hardware store and it had these little white worms in it. She planted her basil and mint and within a week the whole container was crawling with them. Had to toss everything and scrub the pots with bleach. She sticks to sterilizing her own soil mix now with the oven method, swears by it.