The neighbors may not like you for this but we have used garlic for the yard. I do not have a huge yard so it wasn't too complicated. We have a wild cat problem (you can find up to 15 cats in my yard most of the time) and along with that came fleas and ticks. My daughter had a tick on her last summer and there was a massive flea outbreak. I sprinkled the garlic powder all over the yard. The same day I did that, I took about 5 teaspoons minced garlic from a jar and added some of the garlic juice. I put this into a spaghetti sauce jar and I then added some water and closed the lid. A few weeks after sprinkling the powder, I used a spray bottle to spray the garlic on the trees and the yard again. It worked quite well, we had no bugs, fleas or ticks for over a month. I thought it would last longer, somebody told me that it would last up to 2 months, so I didn't spray again right away. I then ended up with more fleas.
This year I will spray it more often, it does work and fortunately my neighbors like garlic as you can't miss the smell of it!
For my plants I used a natural spray. It was purchased but completely non toxic. You can spray it on the vegetable the same day you are harvesting your plants. Safe for animals too. Not sure how it kills the bugs, but it works! Only thing I had last year on my plants were the tomato hornworm which I cut the branches off where the worm was instead of spraying the little buggers.
On my floors during a flea outbreak, I used a combination of borax (not boric acid but borax soap) and table salt. I sprinkled into the carpets and kept my cats and kids out of the house until it was vacuumed. Of course if you use this method, you will need to keep cleaning your filters on vacuum. Borax soap is not a highly toxic chemical but should not be used while a kid would be playing on the floor. Not safe to swallow. This method works best if you wait at least a day after vacuuming. The vibration of the vacuum many times causes the flea eggs to hatch and the borax will kill the flea in the larvae cycle. The salt will dehydrate the adult flea.
You can also use a flea trap, similar to other traps people have mentioned. Take a pie dish with water and soap (don't use vinegar, fleas so not like vinegar.) You can use oil in place of the dish soap if you like. Put on the floor with a bright light directly over it, it is best to have it within a foot over it. Fleas jump up to the light and land in the water. The soapy water traps them and kills them almost instantly. The oil works too but soap kills them faster.
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1
Let’s Share Green Pest Control Tips
Started by Hysssss-teria, Mar 02 2012 11:19 AM
28 replies to this topic
#22
Posted 10 March 2012 - 12:16 AM
This isn’t directed at anybody, so please don’t take offense. But it is an extremely important point that could easily be missed by those of us seeking non-toxic solutions in the best interests of the welfare of our households and our planet.
It would be great if we could control cockroaches with baking soda -- and I fervently wish that it were that easy. But the simple truth is that it is not. Please don’t entrust roach control to baking soda. You’ll only succeed in lulling yourself into a false sense of security. These creatures have survived virtually unchanged for 300 million years. They’re better at it than we are, and will probably outlast mankind.
According to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Cockroach Control Manual:
“Bran, baking soda, and baking powder. An old wives’ tale says that if you feed bran to insects, the bran will swell up inside the insect and it will die. There are similar claims made about baking soda and baking powder, common leavening agents used in baking. Bran, baking powder, and baking soda will not cause cockroaches to die.”
http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/roach/roach10Eng.pdf
Yes, sugar and other sweets are typical ATTRACTANTS used in roach baits -- although there’s not much in the way of edibles that roaches will NOT eat. Sweets are strong attractants, though. I routinely mixed honey, molasses and peanut butter into my most poisonous concoctions way back before I knew better than to use toxins. But sweets weren’t what killed them -- chemicals known to be toxic to them killed them. And even back in the ’80s, plain old boric acid was a mainstay backup used by all pest control professionals.
I’ve read the “blow-up” theories and claims with great interest for about 30 years now -- including using corn meal and grits for ants, but have never been able to find anything scientific to back them up. And I never used ANY pest control measure in the homes of my customers before proving it in MY OWN household (I tried them all).
If you Google “Can roaches get stomach gas?” your top results will say, “Yes!“ Those will be from eHow, WiseGeek, HubPages, Helium and WikiAnswers -- all of which accept unproven “user contributions” as long as they SEEM to be convincing. Today as a professional writer, I am required to use scientifically sound, proven references, such as universities and medical organizations when I write on topics as serious as pest control. These other sites don’t have any such requirements -- please use caution and take what they say with a grain of salt. None of my many, many hours of intensive research over the past 30 years have rendered a single credible reference to corroborate the bug bellyache theories.
The University of Florida, North Carolina State University, Clemson, Arizona Ag Dept., and on and on -- all advocate the sugar/boric acid mix, citing the sugar as the benign attractant, not the killing agent.
Don’t trust Google for all of your answers. Please consult scientific and educational sites by going to www.SearchEdu.com.
It would be great if we could control cockroaches with baking soda -- and I fervently wish that it were that easy. But the simple truth is that it is not. Please don’t entrust roach control to baking soda. You’ll only succeed in lulling yourself into a false sense of security. These creatures have survived virtually unchanged for 300 million years. They’re better at it than we are, and will probably outlast mankind.
According to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Cockroach Control Manual:
“Bran, baking soda, and baking powder. An old wives’ tale says that if you feed bran to insects, the bran will swell up inside the insect and it will die. There are similar claims made about baking soda and baking powder, common leavening agents used in baking. Bran, baking powder, and baking soda will not cause cockroaches to die.”
http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/roach/roach10Eng.pdf
Yes, sugar and other sweets are typical ATTRACTANTS used in roach baits -- although there’s not much in the way of edibles that roaches will NOT eat. Sweets are strong attractants, though. I routinely mixed honey, molasses and peanut butter into my most poisonous concoctions way back before I knew better than to use toxins. But sweets weren’t what killed them -- chemicals known to be toxic to them killed them. And even back in the ’80s, plain old boric acid was a mainstay backup used by all pest control professionals.
I’ve read the “blow-up” theories and claims with great interest for about 30 years now -- including using corn meal and grits for ants, but have never been able to find anything scientific to back them up. And I never used ANY pest control measure in the homes of my customers before proving it in MY OWN household (I tried them all).
If you Google “Can roaches get stomach gas?” your top results will say, “Yes!“ Those will be from eHow, WiseGeek, HubPages, Helium and WikiAnswers -- all of which accept unproven “user contributions” as long as they SEEM to be convincing. Today as a professional writer, I am required to use scientifically sound, proven references, such as universities and medical organizations when I write on topics as serious as pest control. These other sites don’t have any such requirements -- please use caution and take what they say with a grain of salt. None of my many, many hours of intensive research over the past 30 years have rendered a single credible reference to corroborate the bug bellyache theories.
The University of Florida, North Carolina State University, Clemson, Arizona Ag Dept., and on and on -- all advocate the sugar/boric acid mix, citing the sugar as the benign attractant, not the killing agent.
Don’t trust Google for all of your answers. Please consult scientific and educational sites by going to www.SearchEdu.com.
#24
Posted 11 March 2012 - 07:41 AM
Has anyone tried something called diatomaceous earth to get rid of fleas? I have read various things about how well it works to strip down their hard shell. Just curious if anybody has tried it and had any luck with it. I already know we are going to be having a huge flea problem in town again this year. It was bad last year and our winter wasn't very cold to get rid of bugs.
#25
Posted 13 March 2012 - 05:37 PM
Hysssss-teria, on 02 March 2012 - 11:19 AM, said:
We share our world with lots of pests of all sorts, and as soon as the weather warms up a bit we’ll be seeing lots more of them. Whether you have ants in your kitchen, aphids on your roses, or the neighbor’s dog or cat is doing its business in your petunias -- there’s probably a non-toxic answer for your problem!
I’ll start us off with this one …
We get those pesky little fruit flies all over the place for a month or two each summer. For one reason, we don’t have A/C so the doors and windows are open and those things come right through the screens. Second, we have all sorts of attractants here. Bananas and apples on the kitchen counter, empty soda and beer cans in the recycle bin, dropped fruit in the macaw cage. So we get fruit flies.
Make your own traps. Pour about 1/8 inch of fruit juice, beer or apple cider vinegar into an empty plastic cup. Add a drop of liquid dish soap (very important) and swirl around to mix. Drop a small scrap of very sweet fruit such as a piece of cantaloupe or half a grape into the liquid. Make sure that the liquid doesn’t cover the fruit entirely.
Cover the top of the cup completely with clear tape. Leave a ¼ to ½ inch opening in the middle of the taped area. Set the trap in your gnat area. They will be attracted to the fermenting fruit, enter the trap through the tiny opening and drown in the liquid below.
I’ll start us off with this one …
We get those pesky little fruit flies all over the place for a month or two each summer. For one reason, we don’t have A/C so the doors and windows are open and those things come right through the screens. Second, we have all sorts of attractants here. Bananas and apples on the kitchen counter, empty soda and beer cans in the recycle bin, dropped fruit in the macaw cage. So we get fruit flies.
Make your own traps. Pour about 1/8 inch of fruit juice, beer or apple cider vinegar into an empty plastic cup. Add a drop of liquid dish soap (very important) and swirl around to mix. Drop a small scrap of very sweet fruit such as a piece of cantaloupe or half a grape into the liquid. Make sure that the liquid doesn’t cover the fruit entirely.
Cover the top of the cup completely with clear tape. Leave a ¼ to ½ inch opening in the middle of the taped area. Set the trap in your gnat area. They will be attracted to the fermenting fruit, enter the trap through the tiny opening and drown in the liquid below.
Thanks for this! Truly.
I used to live in a place where we would have trip digit weather for most of the summer. Ants were a big problem. It was too hot for them too! We used regular table salt outside the door and all around the outside of the apartment. Salt also works for slugs too.
#26
Posted 16 March 2012 - 04:21 AM
dconklin, on 11 March 2012 - 07:41 AM, said:
Has anyone tried something called diatomaceous earth to get rid of fleas? I have read various things about how well it works to strip down their hard shell. Just curious if anybody has tried it and had any luck with it. I already know we are going to be having a huge flea problem in town again this year. It was bad last year and our winter wasn't very cold to get rid of bugs.
#27
Posted 16 March 2012 - 08:05 AM
Shortpoet-GTD, on 16 March 2012 - 04:21 AM, said:
Nice, thank you! It looks like it is a more natural and non toxic way to handle the situation as long as I do not breath it in.
#28
Posted 16 March 2012 - 08:59 AM
Hysssss-teria, on 09 March 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:
No, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Every roach I ever chased away from sugar looked pretty doggone healthy and happy to me!
By the way … (Cockroach Trivia Time)
Did you know … that a roach can live for a month with nothing to eat other than the glue on the back of a single postage stamp?
By the way … (Cockroach Trivia Time)
Did you know … that a roach can live for a month with nothing to eat other than the glue on the back of a single postage stamp?
Yes, I did know this. It is very interesting to know just what these bugs can survive on. I have been looking for more environmental friendly ways to just kill them because I can't stand the critters.
#29
Posted 11 December 2012 - 05:46 PM
Every time my hibiscus is about to bloom the buds get covered in these tiny little black bugs. I've been using garlic water with a little liquid soap and black pepper to get rid of them. I didn't have a sprayer handy so I poked a hole in the lid of a plastic bottle with a pushpin and dripped it down on the buds. I used the root tips I had cut off of a few garlic cloves while cooking. Just those tiny pieces reeked and I have been periodically adding more water and more garlic bits.
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