You need a pet bullfrog.

Irradiate the soil to kill the fly eggs. Dig up the top 3" of soil and microwave it for about 3 minutes. Let it cool, and then replace the soil.

You need a sundew. Barring that, those sticky yellow traps work pretty good too.

Hmmm...I have enough sunlight for a carnivorous plant and a bunch of empty pots. Can you easily cultivate a fly-eater enough to deal with the problem? Where would you even get one? Would it work, or work too well and then you need to feed it? Will it start singing?

Also, having a flesh-eating plant among my happy tasty herbs should make me feel like an evil wizard.

This is a good feeling.

Fly-eating plants won't be much help here- they only eat a few bugs in their lifetime and they digest really slowly.
Microwaving the soil actually sounds pretty brilliant.

Rmless2, I disagree. I have about 700 carnivorous plants representing almost all CP species and many of them eat extraordinary quantities of bugs. Flytraps are the least efficient, sundews are the most efficient, especially when dealing with tiny flying insects like fungus gnats. To put your link in context: Barry, the guy who wrote the linked faq, is strongly against casual sale and distribution of CPs (think of him as a less-militant and more planty version of PETA). He's a charming guy otherwise and a lot of fun at CP meetups.

Anyway, TheWhelk: get a Cape Sundew, aka Drosera campensis. Very easy to grow (a little too easy, I'm forever weeding them out from other species' pots). I've had good experiences with this vendor. If you're located in the SF Bay area, I'll be happy to give you some from my collection.

(imagine my link to the Drosera went here)

Carnivorous plants are cool, but it strikes me as the old lady and the fly. Keep making/growing/buying something to help when the easier solution is being overlooked.

Irradiating the soil works. And The Welk won't have to wait for the new plant to grow.

Good luck, The Welk.

Terrapin: You're overlooking the evil wizard's garden aspect of all this. Having something eat my pests to live is ...appealing. Plus, warm house, bright full light, someone home all day most days to keep it wet....

All the way over in NYC and now itching for a Sundew. Off to do my readings and order seeds unless someone knows of a place I can a grown plant in Manhattan?

(Fussing over a new plant would be less work than irradiating cause...no microwave. I'd have to go to a friends' and be all "Can I kill some horrible larva in the thing you use to make food?")

I'll mail you some seeds, after all spreading these plants to every human household is my mission here on Earth!

Email in profile...hmm, wait, updating my profile didn't make it show up. Oh well, same user name on MF.

seeeeent