If you like to sit outdoors in the summer, you almost certainly have a bit of a garden, patio or deck that you like to relax on of a summer’s evening. With a few flowers for colour and perfume, it makes an ideal location to relax. Add a water feature and a cold drink and I am in my element.
That is until five or six o’ clock, at which time the light starts to fade and the mosquitoes come out. They spoil it for me or at least they used to until I found neat little tricks to hold the mosquitoes at bay – out of my yard and into someone else’s. Not that I wish mosquitoes on my friends, but they will go somewhere else, if they do not come to me.
The first thing to do is learn a bit about the mosquito. Mosquitoes are not really very strong fliers and they are easily damaged and easily blown off course. Therefore, most of the mosquitoes you meet in your garden were born there. Some people say tht mosquitoes do not travel over a few metres from where they were born.
They like to lay their eggs in still water and it need not be that much. Millions of mosquitoes are born in still water that collects in the leaves of living plants. Now, I am not recommending that you cut all your plants down, but you did ought to clean up any old junk in the garden that can retain water.
You can fill in holes and indentations in paths, stow away watering cans and unused flower pots, clean blocked gutters, clear away fallen leaves and maybe think about the flowers that you are buying next time you are in the garden centre. If you have a water feature, make sure that there are fish in it that eat insects – some do not.
The next thing to do is find out which plants mosquitoes do not like and they do have their preferences, the same like we do. Mosquitoes hate anything that smells of lemons. So, you can plant, lemon balm, citronella, lemon trees, lemon grass and anything else that smells lemony.
If the plants can not quite produce enough lemon smell some evenings, you can supplement them with lemon-scented candles or citronella oil rubbed straight onto your skin. It is a perfectly natural oil, so should not injure you, your children or your pets. Dogs suffer from mosquitoes as much as we do.
As mentioned above, mosquitoes are not robust fliers, so a good fan, normally kills hundreds of them a night by blowing them against walls and the fan’s blades. A favourite of mine on a bad night, is a mosquito trap.
One that has highly-charged electrical wiring behind an alluring ultra-violet light, the sound of them crackling away on the electrified wire is very enjoyable and extremely effective
One mosquito trap can clear a whole garden, but my all-time favourite is the tennis racquet type bug-zapper, the one that looks like a child’s tennis racquet. Anything that gets past your defences, is a certain gonner, if you have a racquet bug zapper
Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with work on mosquito bite treatment problems. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Bite Swellings.