Originally Posted by Sarah Dale

Tom2 wrote:
Hello folks,
HELP PLEASE, I grow vegatables and salads in pots but I am constantly
bothered with scariad flies and the maggoty larva in the compost, I

Hi Tom,

I suffer similar problems occassionaly with lots of small grey flies
coming from the compost. I've tried the following successfully (all
methods are organic):-

1) Move all plants etc to the bathroom, CLEAN thouroughly their normal
locations - windows, window cills, containers etc., so all traces of fly
removed. In the meantime fill the bath with water and plunge the pots in
to over the top of the compost and leave for a few hours. This totally
sorted out the plant I had that was suffering this problem.

2) When watering, add a drop or 2 of washing up liquid to the water -
this should help keep numbers down, not so successful as the flooding
method though.

In order to prevent the problem (organically), I have read the following
are useful methods:

a) Always watering from the bottom rather than the top

b) Using a layer of gravel on top.

HTH,

Sarah