5 MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS TO CONTROL MOSQUITOES IN YOUR COMPOUND

People often ask us how they can get rid of the mosquitoes that are in their yard or home.  By the time you have a large mosquito population to deal with, you are too late to deal with them the best way:  Prevention.  The ideal approach for controlling mosquitoes is to never let the population explode in the first place.

We always recommend using mosquito repellents, but are there things you can do to make your entire yard less attractive to mosquitoes?

Everyone knows that mosquitoes are annoying, but there are serious health reasons for keeping mosquito colonies from forming around your yard or home.  The advent of the Zika virus is just the latest in a number of mosquito-borne issues that present real health risks.  Mosquitoes also carry more common diseases like West Nile Virus, and in other parts of the world more deadly afflictions like Malaria.

FIVE WAYS TO CONTROL MOSQUITOES IN YOUR YARD

ELIMINATE ALL STANDING WATER

The single most important thing you can do to manage mosquito populations is to manage standing water in your environment.  Mosquitoes love standing, still water.  To them, a nice little puddle that doesn’t go away for a few days is the perfect home.  Larger bodies of water, like rivers and lakes, are actually less attractive to them as long as the water is clean and moving (many lakes have slow currents, and even when they don’t the water is often constantly moving around).

Be sure to eliminate (or treat) any of these breeding grounds in your yard.  The obvious ones are puddles and small ponds, but there are many other places that you should look as well.  It has been said that mosquitoes can breed in as little as a half inch of water!

• Landscape ponds
• Lawn or yard ornaments with standing water features
• Buckets that accumulate rainwater or runoff
• Puddles
• Bird baths
• Ruts that hold standing water
• Edges of lakes or ponds where dirty water pools. (a simple sandy or grass shoreline is best)
• Clogged gutters and downspouts, leaving exposed, pooled water (a gutter guard can be a DIY way to solve this)
• Plant bowls saucers
• Other items that can collect rainwater or runoff – such as a wheelbarrow that is not turned upside down

Some of these are pretty easy to fix – such keeping buckets indoors and dry, or turning your wheelbarrow over.  Others are not as easy, but perhaps even more important.  What if you have a low spot in your yard that routinely puddles?  It might make sense to build that area up for proper drainage, even if it means hauling in fill and resodding.  What if you live near a pond?  Work with your municipality to keep the shoreline free of standing, shallow-pooled water.

From Mosquito nets and insecticides to repellents and electric mosquito killers here are ways to control mosquitos in your environment

IF YOU CANNOT GET RID OF WATER, CONSIDER TREATING IT FOR MOSQUITOES

While the best, and typically most green, solution to mosquito breeding grounds is to eliminate the water, sometimes this can be very difficult.  Areas like drainage ponds, runoff drains, or some landscape features are inherently designed to hold water.  What, then, can be done to be sure that water does not become the preferred home of a mosquito colony?

While prevention is always preferred to treatment, treatment of mosquito breeding grounds is strongly preferred to allowing a thriving group of the bugs to reproduce and spread illness.  There are a few was to treat standing water, the simplest being an every-30-day treatment that can prevent larvae from growing.  Mosquito Dunks and Bits are the most popular and easiest way to to this.  These come in a solid format and can treat a large pond for a month or so.  They are about as easy to use as possible — you simply toss one into the water, and it slowly floats around and treats the water.  While manufacturers claim they are organic, we can only comment that from a layperson’s viewpoint, they sure seem safe.  Plus, we have a point-of-view that the effects of mosquito diseases are likely worse than the effects of throwing one of these into your pond.

Mosquito Dunks have a cousin called the Mosquito Bits, found here.  The only difference is that dunks are slow-release and meant to be used to treat water for 30 days.  Bits deploy all of their larvae-fighting agents within 24 hours or so.

There are also liquid forms of water treatment, which may work more quickly but typically need to be reapplied every week or so.  The active ingredient is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate.  The jury is still on the safety of SLS to humans – but it is the same ingredient found in things like soaps, shampoos, and beauty care products.

One notable, and emerging method for controlling mosquito larvae in water, is to use coffee grounds.  Studies are showing that coffee grounds can prevent young mosquitoes from developing.  It is one of the more promising organic mosquito control solutions we are seeing right now.

As for standing water that comes in the form of a hottub or pool, treatment is a little easier.  Make sure that you are keeping the pool covered if possible.  Perhaps the most critical thing you can do is keep the poo