Hello gardening friends, welcome to Backyard Basics.
Well, at certain parts of the year, especially in the summer time but it occurs really through
out the warm months we run in to this guy right here.
This big 'ole mosquito biting us on the arm, hassling us while we're out side and we can
prevent that.
I think that one of the more important ways of doing this is using is to use some of the
natural mosquito repellents that are out there.
There's really an assortment here, many of them or most of them really are made out of
herb oils of some kind: eucalyptus, clove, peppermint, citronella is on of the more popular
ones and so this is what you'll find in stores that sell natural products and you'll find
them in the places where you'll get camping gear too.
So this will be my first choice.
If I'm going outside for a while, I'll go ahead and put some of that one me.
A lot of people like to make their own and there are many oils, high quality oils, that
you might select at some of these same places -- especially health food stores and herb
shops and groceries that sell natural products -- you'll find the oils themselves and you
can make your own little sprays.
What you're going to use is an alcohol.
A 190 proof grain alcohol, you gotta get that at a liquor store but that's the basic one
that's being used and then its mixed with any of these oils or sometime the combination
of them and you can make a nice little spray at home but on the market you'll find many
things to keep them out of the yard or to manage them where they're breeding and where
they're breeding in tires and water ponds these different places out in the yard you
might use something like this.
This stops them in the water and this is a bacteria and this bacteria when added to ponds
and all of these places where they're breeding, little places in the back where water accumulates,
it doesn't make a difference where they're breeding this would be very good to sprinkle
in there and it breaks them up at that larval stage and that's a critical point to get rid
of them.
Sometimes they're all over the backyard and you want to use the yard this weekend for
a barbeque or whatever you might be doing -- swimming out there- and so a good way to
repel them is with a garlic spray.
Garlic is very effective and I mean very effective when you spray it over the yard and you can
easily use something like this on several thousand feet and it works for several weeks
also so garlic is a very good one.
Here's one that comes partly from South America and it's got an herb that is used down there
quite a bit and its called Anderoba (sp?) and Anderoba mixed with citronella and a little
bit of rosemary and some time make a great repellent.
You put these out around the area and you light them and they will repel the mosquitoes
very very well.
This is a trap, a pheromone trap.
This is also very effective.
It has some holes on the side, you'll mix up the pheromone, add it in to this and over
time, not to long really, the mosquitoes start coming in there in large numbers.
You just leave them there and you collect a whole bunch of them and then you can get
another pheromone pack and start over but it lasts a very long time out in the yard
and here's another one right here that you'll find and this is a granular to spread around
the yard.
It covers 3,000 -- 4,000 square feet, a nice area.
And this one has lemon grass in it, it has some peppermint oil and garlic oil and its
on fuller earth, a natural product and so this is another granular that's really popular
out there.
There are some other ones based around cedar oils, those are good to broadcast out into
the yard.
And there are some traditional plants that sometimes people grow them at home and make
their own mosquito repellents.
This is one of the scented geraniums right here.
This is a very effective one commonly used many places.
Sometimes you'll find the oils out there too.
Here is lemon grass.
Lemon grass is on that is used in the far east in Asian countries and folks over here
who know how to use it will make a extract out of the lemon grass and there are other
things like cat nip, lemon balm and this yarrow.
This is a very common one, normally we use the white yarrow.
So this another thing that can be made at home.
So as you can see there are many natural ways of controlling this.
You don't have to spray yourself with some kind of a chemical to manage the mosquitoes
and enjoy your yard.
For Backyard Basics I'm John Drumgle I'll see you next time.