...and how do I get rid of them!
First I don't know what they're called. A search for "tiny black flies" didn't turn up anything so I'll try to describe them. They fly very slowly, almost hovering, and seem to be attracted to house plants and the fruit and veg peelings that are waiting to be composted.
I'd rather not spray pesticides so please suggest organic solutions to rid my house of them.
Sounds like fruit flies to me. Try trapping them in a jar with a few centimetres of fruit juice or sugar water. A paper funnel will stop them from flying out so easily.
Or you could try nature’s solution; A pitcher plant.
These sound like fungus gnats rather than fruit flies to me.
Do an image search for fungus gnat to be certain that's what you have.
They breed really fast, and feed on fungus growing in the soil of over-watered house plants. You should attack the cause rather than trying to kill the flies themselves, by letting the surface compost of your plants dry out. After a week or two they will be gone, then you need to avoid over-watering in future.
Yep, it's fungus gnats, although I don't ever remember anyone calling them that. Do they have another common name?
I checked all my plants, and although none of them are over watered, the soil is crawling with the baby flies. Thinking about it, a few seem to emerge every October or November, only this year they are coming out in annoying numbers which made me take notice.
It makes sense because the weather is cool, so the soil dries out really slowly, but the central heating hasn't been switched on yet.
Problem solved I think.
I've got a story about this. One time a fungus gnat flew into an LCD monitor in front of the back light. For several days it walked around around the screen, and you could see the shadow whenever a bright colour was displayed.
Eventually the gnat died right in the centre of the screen. How annoying. Don't underestimate these pests destructive capabilities.
It's a shame that one of these pests wrecked a perfectly good monitor.
Drying out the compost worked really well, and my house is completely fungus gnat free. It took until now for them to be completely gone, and I think the warm spell helped.
That's what we have at our office, then: fungus flies. We have 7 or 8 big planters with peace lilies in them..they like lots of moisture, so the flies are flourishing!!! How do you get rid of them without letting the plants get so dry??