Pesky little bugs

At the moment I have quite a few cuttings germinating inside the house, along with other plants like Basil & Parsley. plus house plants. I seem to be getting lots of tiny, tiny black flying insects around the plants and then around the house. They are smaller than ants and, in spite of taking all the stuff outside and hosing them etc before bringing them back in, the bugs reappear!! I can't photograph them as they are too damn small

This all goes on even in winter when I have the windows shut. So, how do I stop them appearing?? And where do they come from in the first place??

 

Probably fungus flies, do you have tiny white maggot like worms in the top of the compost?

 

Nope - no eggs anywhere, just the flies. I spend loads of time clapping my hands together to swat them - they black and are less than the size of a pinhead and move around comparatively slowly.
It puzzles me how they even find these plants even when the windows are shut!

 

Yes, they will be fungus flies and they come in the compost, find its the pots from the garden centers that seem to be the culprits, but could be your bags of compost as well.

The best way to rid them is to drench every plant / pot and compost in the house in one go.

You need to make up a small bucket with a suitable insecticide and then immerse each pot full so the compost, particularly the top inch is soaked, that way you ensure all the grubs and hopefully eggs are killed.
A job really for a warm sunny day as you do not want the plant sitting in a lot of water for long.

You can just spray around the surface of the compost to kill the actual flies but that will only be a short term thing.

Some years ago we bought the organic Gnatt Off from a local hyrophonics shop and it worked well, though expect something like Provado will work, but we use gloves with that !
Plus be careful with whatever you use, as cuttings and seedlings might not like a strong drench.