When warm weather rolls around, it often brings bugs. Ants, mosquitoes, and roaches tend to flourish in the summer, making outdoor gatherings uncomfortable.
When insects come inside your house, they can spread illnesses and cause property damage. At O’Connor Pest Control, we offer a wide range of safe, effective treatments to eliminate insect infestations and prevent them from reoccurring.
To keep your home bug-free in warm weather, try implementing the following pest control measures as soon as you notice the days getting hotter. With preparation and consistency, you can keep bugs away from your indoor and outdoor living areas.
Three Pest Control Tips For Warm Weather
1. Clean Outdoor Areas and Remove Standing Water
Water is a major attraction for bugs such as mosquitoes and roaches. Mosquitoes can lay their eggs wherever water collects in puddles and becomes stagnant.
After a rainstorm, puddles can form in hard-to-reach places, including buckets, flower pots, and old tires. If one of these puddles remains standing for several days, a female mosquito can lay hundreds of eggs in it, contributing to the swarms of biting insects around your property. By carefully inspecting outdoor areas for puddles as small as a silver dollar, you can reduce the mosquito population around your house for the summer.
Insects can also multiply in piles of leaf litter or dead tree branches. Spring rains can blow down leaves and branches from trees, creating piles of debris on rooftops and clogging roof gutters. If this debris remains on the ground or your roof, it can provide a breeding ground for a huge variety of insects.
When bugs reproduce in leaf litter on your roof or in your gutters, they can easily invade your home by the hundreds. Therefore, one of the best strategies for pest elimination is to remove dead leaves and branches from your lawn, roof and gutters.
2. Discourage Mosquitoes With Naturally Pest-Repellent Landscaping
Warm weather provides an opportunity to plant a garden. To help keep the insect population down, you can opt for bug-repellent flowers, shrubs and herbs.
Citronella grass is an aromatic plant that grows in warm weather and produces a fresh citrus scent. It repels mosquitoes so well that many pest elimination products use citronella essential oil as the main ingredient.
While citronella is the most popular plant to use in gardens for pest control, other herbs and grasses can create an additional layer of protection as well as a pleasant fragrance. These aromatic plants smell wonderful to humans but interfere with the sense receptors in mosquitoes, making them confused and less likely to bite.
Some of the top insect-repelling flowers and herbs include:
- Fragrant geraniums
- Allium bulbs
- Marigolds
- Lavender
- Basil
- Rosemary
- Sage
- Catnip
In general, the more fragrant the plant, the more irritating it will be for mosquitoes. Allium bulbs include plants such as onion, garlic and scallion, which can produce beautiful purple flowers and edible grasses. With plenty of aromatic plants growing in beds or pots in your back yard, your future outdoor gatherings could be mosquito-free.
3. Deter Bugs With Essential Oils
Aromatic plants produce fragrant oils that repel insects just as well in distilled form. Bugs such as mosquitoes, ticks and fleas shy away from the strong citrus aromas in many essential oils.
From lemon eucalyptus to tea tree oil, the types of essential oils that most effectively repel bugs typically smell slightly medicinal and antiseptic. However, any strong-smelling essential oil will help deter insect bites.
Before applying essential oils to your skin and hair, dilute them with a neutral carrier such as almond or mineral oil. Start by applying a small amount to the back of your hand to see if your skin can tolerate the oil.
Contact A Professional
By implementing these strategies in warm-weather months, you can minimize the insect population around your home. A professional exterminator can provide immediate relief from all types of infestations. Call O’Connor Pest Control today to learn more about eliminating pests from your home and garden.