Black Dots on House/Siding/Windows

Hello everyone - just had a quick question. Since I moved in last summer, I have noticed 'black dots' all over my white railing and siding (which is white). This has gotten worse and now I am beginning to notice these dots appearing on my windows and now on my car. What are they? How can you get them off?

A friend of mine told me that they are bug 'waste' and that you can just power wash it off. I sure hope he is correct, but I am having a heck of a time even getting them off my windows and railings on my porch when I scrub to the nth degree.

On a side note...I have noticed a great deal of spiders around and in my house. I plan on spraying this weekend. I wonder if they are the cause...

any help would be appreciated!

 

Are you under a flight path? When I lived in The Farm we had the same thing. We lived under the out-bound international flight path and were told it were told it was resedue from jet exhaust.

Spiders - lucky you! Don't spray too vigerously or you'll kill them all and get other, nastier critters.

 

Yes! I've been scraping these little dots off my cars for a couple years now. I know exactly what you are talking about. I don't know what the heck they are, but they are definately not bug waste. Its like tiny droplets of a light tar or something. Jet exhaust might make sense.

 

mulch recently? its more than likely shotgun fungus, the spores can be shot 15 feet away!!

 

http://www.dcs1.com/articles/shotgun.html

http://www.aginfo.psu.edu/news/july97/fungus.html

It looks like shotgun fungus

 

You don't want to kill the beneficial bugs, or you will get more nasty bugs. You want to like the good bugs, like (according to Orcon, Organic Control Inc (product purchased from Blue Mount Nursery, Beneficial Nematodes, microscopic worms that help control japanese beetle larvae as well as other soil dwelling and wood boring pests):

Beneficial Ones
Green Lacewings
Predatory Mites
Praying Mantids
Earthworms
Earthworm Castings
Fly Parasites
Beneficial Nematodes
Cryptolaemus
Trichogramma
Encarsia Formosa
Decollate Snails
Delphastus Pusillus
Aphytis Melinus
Flea Destroyer
Ladybugs

 

I started noticing this problem a few years ago after I was very generous in putting mulch down. Turns out that if the mulch doesn't have enough air to decompose, it can become a breeding ground for the artillery fungus.

If you turn up the mulch to get some air in it, it should start to alleviate the problem.

I must say its quite a strange problem because the fungus likes to shoot on bright white/light colored things (forget the reason why). I ended up parking my darker colored car closer to the mulch because the lighter colored one was getting bombarded with the little dots. The darker colored car one gets little to no dots. Gotta love Mother Nature.

 

This story is quite humorous - who would of thought a fungus spore could create such havoc?!

 

Whut?

There's a fungus amongus?