short intro and advice on which plants to use for gnats/white flies

ebennett@dhvx20.csudh.edu
Thu, 20 Apr 1995 21:55:15 PST

Hello all,

Hi my name is Edward Bennett, 22, attending C.S.U. Dominguez Hills in
southern california going towards a bachelors in MicroBiology. Looking to go
into Disease applied/research genetic engineering/biochemistry like for cancer
and AIDS, etc.
I've had a fascination with carnivorous plants since I was 5, but never
really had one. Also at the same time I became highly interested in rare and
unusual Cactus and Succulents which I've been collecting and propagating for a
year now in my room which it has out grown and now I must build a rain shelter
like housing out in the back yard for them. I don't have much problems with
most of the pests of them but I have a problem with I guess they are called
"gnats" little black flies, and this is a nuisance in my room. Yellow, sticky
boards only helped to keep the population from growing, and systemics, as they
cannot be too strong for C&S doesn't seem to affect them as well as pyruthrin
sprays on contact either.
I've got my collection of C&S going well now with a good schedule which
doesn't take up much time so now I would like to start my collection of
carnivourous plants for pest control and fascination to propagate them. I'm
new to them and have a book by Marcel Lecoufle "Carnivourous plants" which
showed me CS that I though never existed.
I would like to get your opinion from experience, which carnivourous
plants I should try using in my cactus and succulents collections to help
control gnats/whiteflies. Most of my collection is in 3/4 to 50% sun light and
my room is from 55-60F at night to 70-80F day time with central heating so I
suppose my humidity level is very low.
Also can you recommend me a few good nurseries within 2-3 hours drive
of Los Angeles, or mail order nurseries, address, and the price of their
catalog.

Lastly, I haven't recieved any mail from cp since I joined about a week
ago and was just wondering if cp is a low traffice net, just comparing it to
the traffic I get on Cacti_etc, and wanted to know if here it is done
differently like the mail is not sent automatically to me or not or is my
account bugged?

Thankyou for all your time and hope to hear from you,

Edward Bennett
ebennett@dhvx20.csudh.edu