Ailing Ivy Plant?

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Ali_Elise New York, NY Feb 09, 2010

Hey everyone, I'm new to this site, but I love it so far! I am a college student in MA, and keep many houseplants in my dorm, taking after my mom in our apartment in NYC :).
My plants have been doing great, and I'm very happy, but my boyfriend has an small ivy plant that we bought at a super market, and though It was doing really well for a while, we left it in his room while we went home for a weekend, and didn't realize the heat was being turned on in our dorms for the first time. The sudden dryness caused the poor little plant to lose almost all of its leaves, and we thought it might not make it. It looked mostly dead for several months, but we kept watering/misting it in hopes it would bounce back. All of a sudden two weeks ago it did! tons of new leaves sprouted and it has been looking better and better, needless to say we were thrilled. However, despite its recent seemingly better health, we just noticed some small bugs running around in its dirt. They do not appear to be on the leaves or stems, but there are quite a few in the soil. I don't know what they are, they almost look like tiny fruit-flies... I'm scared to do anything that would stress the plant as it is just beginning to come back to life... Do you think I should change the soil/be worried about the bugs or just let it keep growing as it finally seems to be doing?
Thanks in advance, I really appreciate any advice!

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Feb 09, 2010

Those sound like fungus gnats--they frequently show up when things are a little too wet, so you might back off a bit on watering and misting. If you can find some mosquito dunks, add those to the water next time it needs to be watered, they will help take care of the gnat larvae that are in the soil. For the adults, you can put up yellow sticky traps to catch them.

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Ali_Elise New York, NY Feb 09, 2010

thanx! I'll give that a try :)

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