I am fairly new to houseplants and was only familiar with neem, having worked well in my 10b backyard vegetable garden. When I changed apartments, I had left a bag of potting soil in a bin for some weeks, opened the bin slightly and did not realize until a day or two later my apartment was COVERED in gnats. But I thought they were FLEAS because of my two cats. I was HORRIFIED. then I realized they were flying ...fleas do not fly....then I realized where they came from. Got rid of the bin, deep cleaned, didn't have enough plants (if any actually) that were not confined to my fire escape, excepting my money tree which lived atop the fridge.
I've been picking up 2 for 10 succs from random little Chinese and Korean markets. They tend to have some damage and pests about them. And I do not have much room in my shoebox of an apartment for quarantining. I end up with plants sitting in my bathtub for a week (alternating between that and the bathroom floor because , yes, I do shower haha)
When I moved a dwarf variegated umbrella, a baby rubber, and my beautiful little polka dot plant to a spot next to a few new friends, I had a proliferation of gnats in that corner. I neemed the heck out of everybody, likely sending my polka toward a painful passage onto the next plane of existence. She's holding on by one pink stem, but she was so bushy before I assaulted her with neem.
And the gnats were still there!!!!
So I looked into them and basically put together every remedy I had available by mixing 1 oz peroxide, a moderately hefty squeeze of dish soap, and maybe a tablespoon of cinnamon into a 16 oz spray bottle with the rest being water. I sprayed everybody down, particularly into the soil, but I did not drench the soil.
I had noticed a few gnats around my aloe vera and aeoniums and did the same to them (except once I sprayed my black rose aeoniums right in her poor little face with a spray bottle of natural ingredient all purpose cleaner....she is still with us)
It took a couple of days of monitoring and spraying but I have zero gnats and I have high hopes that none are to be born any time soon in my collection, which is now thriving!
So in summary: no neem. But kitchen sink worked??
