Mosquitoes: non-chemical strategies
I have not gotten rid of the mosquitoes in my yard. I doubt anyone has. But some things help a lot more than others, and the spray is the one you have to keep paying for.
Start with the water
Walk the yard after it rains. Look at anything holding water.
Last time I did this I found mosquito larvae wriggling in a planter that had tipped over. I had walked past it for weeks.
They need less water than you would think. A bottle cap is enough. Check pots and saucers, buckets, the dog bowl, a sagging tarp, a clogged gutter, a wheelbarrow, a kid's toy left out in the grass.
Tip it all out. Then move things so they cannot fill up again.
Take away the water and you take away the next batch. The EPA says the same thing: going after eggs and larvae is usually the cheapest and most effective way to handle mosquitoes.
Why the spraying has to be repeated
Spray knocks down the adults that are in the yard that day. It never touches the water they are breeding in.
In warm weather a mosquito goes from egg to biting adult in three to five days. So a new batch is flying within about a week, and the truck comes back.
It is not that spraying does nothing. It is that it is a knockdown you repeat, not a fix.
Protect yourself, not the whole yard
Everything here protects you. None of it kills anything.
Mosquito incense
This is the one thing that reliably works for me. Citronella, lemongrass and rosemary burned on bamboo sawdust. No pyrethrins in it, so it repels them rather than killing them.
While one is burning, they leave me alone. When it goes out, they come back. It covers the chair you are sitting in, not the yard.
That is my own experience rather than a lab result, and it lines up with what the research says about plant-oil repellents: they work, modestly, up close. It smolders instead of burning with a flame, but it is still hot. Keep it away from kids and pets.
Long, light pants
Not glamorous. Very effective. Thin enough for August, woven tight enough that they cannot bite through. Long sleeves do the same for your arms.
A fan
Mosquitoes are weak fliers. A box fan on the patio makes it much harder for them to land on you. Think of it as fewer bites rather than a clear patio.
If you are going to spray anyway
Some situations call for it. In rough order of what helps most:
- Do not blanket the whole yard. Treating a few problem spots puts down far less than coating everything.
- Stay out of the shrubs in spring and early summer. The shady cover mosquitoes rest in is the same cover birds nest in, and it is where the caterpillars they feed their young live. Pyrethroids are not very toxic to birds directly, but spraying that layer while they are nesting takes the food away right when they need it.
- Never spray anything that is flowering. That is where the bees are, and skipping it costs you nothing.
- Skip the ones that soak into the plant. Neonicotinoids stay in there for months, nectar and pollen included.
- Do it less often. Fewer rounds in a season is a real reduction on its own.
Where this comes from
- US EPA, Success in Mosquito Control: An Integrated Approach.
- US EPA, Mosquito Life Cycle.
- US CDC, Life Cycle of Anopheles Mosquitoes.