The only way I find to beat gnats is to use sticky strips and to water only when the soil is very dry, or go to a coarser mix so it dries out quicker. The container thread here on Houzz is full of great info on this.

Thanks Dowlinggram for the excellent idea. So far the gnat is under control but next water will mix a bit soap for prevention.

Pick up these peppers today. The second harvest during winter months (except pick up a few every now and then). They are small, led grow light is not the ideal source of lighting. still the pepper plant is constantly flowering and producing small fruits. besides, the tender green leaf of pepper is so delicious in soup.

I get the feeling that adding more ventilation might help with the fungus gnats.

Thanks Shule.
Guess I learned to live with gnats. as long as let the soil dried out between watering, plus use yellow sticky paper, that keep gnats under the toleratable amount.

Nice crop of peppers for indoors Yanli! It's amazing you were able to keep them going.

Thanks Prairie_northrose. Just need to do some sort gardening during our long winter. lol.

I will just mention that this year I took cuttings of my tomatoes and peppers and overwintered them inside. I am not getting any fruit like you, but I am able to keep them small. So far I have had a little trouble with whiteflies, but other than that they are doing fine. I will take cuttings of them again soon and get the new plants ready for transplanting. I did it because I was running out of some seeds for harder-to-find hybrid varieties, and of course just to see if I could.

That is a great idea to keep cuttings over winter. Do you use artificial lighting or sunlight? My biggest challenge is lack of sun light in the basement. So I probably won't do this again next winter

Yes, I kept them under lights in the basement until after Christmas. The problem with that is that it's easy to forget about them down there, so they were underwatered and the bugs flourished. I brought them up and put them in a sunny window where I could keep a closer eye on them and things improved, although they got pretty lanky and by last week it all looked really ugly.

But looks don't matter, I just had to keep them alive. A few days ago I took cuttings again and now they are all lined up in trays, looking fine and hopefully growing roots. By the time they are strong enough to go in the sun I am hoping the weather will be nice enough that I can set them outside for at least a couple hours every day. This will save electricity, keep them from getting stretched and get me a headstart on hardening them off, which I usually do a terrible job of.

In conclusion, it's a lot of work to save $3 on seeds. Probably only worth it for hard to find varieties. I thought it was fun though, and wanted to teach my kids about propagation by cuttings. Tomatoes root very quickly and easily.