Home Defense Plus Yard

What can you do to prevent ants from settling in your home?

Ants are driven by a search for food, water, and shelter. While it may be impossible to stop every ant, following some basic guidelines can help prevent an invasion:

• Avoid leaving food, dirty dishes, or food particles where ants can get to them. Though they aren’t very selective, most ants are drawn to sugary, fatty, or greasy foods.
• Use gap sealant or caulk to seal cracks and openings around windows, doors, and pipes so ants can’t enter your home.
• Remove debris, rotting logs, and lumber from your yard.
• Repair leaks and dry out moist areas in your home.

Cricket Prevention Tips

Crickets become problematic when they enter your home. These preventive measures will help keep them outdoors:

• Seal cracks in doors, windows, baseboards, and other potential entry points.
• Repair or add screens to windows and vents.
• Keep yard debris, leaves, dead grass, and other organic materials away from your home’s foundation.
• Address moisture problems or leaky pipes around your home.
• Replace outdoor lights with yellow insect-repelling lights.
• Use insecticides to create an exterior barrier around your house.

Earwig Prevention Tips

Earwigs are nuisance pests that can invade your home and yard. These preventative techniques may help avoid or reduce the presence of earwigs:

• Keep debris, piles of leaves, grass cuttings, compost, and other vegetation away from your house.
• Seal cracks that may provide entry points into your home.
• Replace white light bulbs with yellow ones that don’t attract insects.
• Address pooling water and moisture issues in and around your home.
• Install bird feeders to attract birds that feed on earwigs.
• Treat your home with insecticides designed to prevent or kill earwigs.

Flea Prevention Tips

Fleas multiply quickly, so the best way to manage an infestation is to stop it before it happens. These guidelines can help keep your family, pets, and home free of fleas:

• Apply a monthly topical flea-repelling treatment to your pet, as prescribed by a veterinarian.
• Regularly vacuum your home, especially areas where fleas may be hiding.
• Wash pet bedding in hot water.
• Keep animals away from areas suspected or known to be flea-infested.
• Bathe pets as directed by your veterinarian.
• Treat your yard with insecticides designed to kill fleas. (Better yet, hire a pest control professional to do this for you!)

How to Prevent Flies

Flies are everywhere! While it will be difficult to avoid them entirely, these guidelines can help reduce your interaction with these pests:

• Install fine mesh screens on windows and doors or keep doors and windows shut.
• Clean up food particles, pet waste, and spilled or spoiled food and beverages immediately.
• Secure lids on trash bins and clean up trash overflow.
• Maintain a clean home.
• Cover food being prepared or eaten outdoors.

Mosquito Prevention Tips

Multiple preventive techniques can be employed to keep mosquitoes at bay.

• Keep standing water to a minimum. Stagnant pools of water, even in small amounts, offer excellent breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Bird baths, toys, gutters, non-chlorinated pools, plant containers, and poorly-drained lawns are all potential havens for mosquitoes.
• Repair torn screens and close gaps where mosquitoes can enter your home.
• Add mosquito-repelling plants like citronella or the lemon-scented geranium to your landscape.
• Use fans to break down carbon dioxide and blow mosquitoes away.
• Add gambusia fish (also called mosquitofish) to ponds. They feed on mosquito larva.
• Wear clothing and shoes to cover exposed skin.
• Burn pinion wood in your outdoor fire pit. Mosquitoes do not like its smell.
• Sprinkle used coffee grounds in standing water. They force mosquito eggs to the surface, depriving them of necessary oxygen.
• Use red cedar mulch or chips in your yard.
• Apply an insect-repelling spray or lotion that contains DEET, lemon-eucalyptus oil, or picaridin.
• Hang a bat house to attract bats to your yard for natural mosquito control, as a single brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in one hour.

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How to Prevent Silverfish

Like most insects, silverfish seek out a comfortable environment with plentiful food sources. The following measures can help to decrease the likelihood of a silverfish infestation:

• Reduce the humidity in your home by repairing water leaks, ventilating moist areas, or using a dehumidifier.
• Clean, vacuum, and mop regularly to remove food scraps, mold, paper, and silverfish eggs. Don’t overlook the interiors of cabinets, baseboards, and areas behind the stove and refrigerator.
• Store food in airtight containers.
• Avoid leaving out uneaten pet food.
• Fill cracks that could serve as potential entry points with caulk or sealant.
• Repair wallpaper that has pulled away from the wall. 
• Place important papers and photographs in sealed containers.
• Avoid creating stacks of newspapers or magazines.

Spider prevention

Spiders are ubiquitous and hard to eliminate completely. However, preventative measures can be taken to minimize spiders in and around your home:

• Eliminate or reduce clutter.
• Exterminate insects that might attract spiders.
• Seal off possible points of entry.
• Turn off outdoor lights.
• Minimize outdoor debris and other potential hiding areas.
• Use natural spider-repellent oils like peppermint, citrus, eucalyptus, cinnamon, cloves, or tea-tree.
• Plant herbs – including basil, lemongrass, mint, rosemary, and lavender – that keep spiders away.

Stinging Insect Prevention

Bees, wasps, and hornets can be good for the environment but, in large numbers, they may introduce risk to your family and property. The simple guidelines below can help you avoid a bee or wasp infestation or sting:

• Do not wear yellow or white outdoors as these colors attract insects.
• Ensure screens on windows are secure and tight.
• Inspect your property regularly for hives or nests.
• Do not engage with bees, wasps, or hornets.

Tick Prevention Tips

Unless you spend all your time indoors, you are likely to encounter an area in which ticks live. The following guidelines can help protect you from becoming a host to these parasites:

• Have your yard professionally treated for ticks. 
• Apply a tick repellent that contains 25%-50% DEET.
• Wear clothes treated with permethrin.
• Tuck in loose clothing, like pant legs or oversized shirts.
• Run clothes worn outside through a dryer cycle.
• After being outside, check your body and hair thoroughly for ticks.
• You should also regularly check pets, whether they live inside or out, for ticks.