How To Avoid Mosquito Bites This Summer
Mosquitoes love a beautiful yard. You may not know this, but you can reduce mosquitoes in your yard and avoid bites if you understand this simple fact. What is it about a beautiful yard that attracts them? We're glad you asked. Join us today as we look at the anatomy of a beautiful yard and give you practical tips that will help you avoid mosquito bites. This article will focus on Phoenix and surrounding areas, such as Chandler and Paradise Valley, but many of the facts you'll pick up here are applicable to any yard, no matter where you live. As always, contact your Greenway Pest Solutions service team if you want to speak to a licensed pest professional about your mosquito troubles. We're your local pest control experts.
Battling the sun in Arizona & how your efforts may attract mosquitoes
It gets hot in Arizona. But it's not the heat you have to battle with if you want to have a beautiful yard; it's the sun's ability to dry up moisture. If you want nice landscaping around your home, you should select appropriate, drought-resistant plants and provide the water those plants need. You may also have potted plants, and you give those plants extra water to combat the dry conditions. All that watering can attract mosquitoes because mosquitoes lay their eggs in stagnant water or on damp surfaces. Here are some examples of where a mosquito might lay eggs.
- A puddle in a low-lying shaded area created by a sprinkler system.
- An inch of water in a flowerpot that has condensed or oversaturated soil.
- In a pool of water on top of an object that collected water when plants were sprayed. For example, an overturned Frisbee, a child’s dump truck, a tarp, or an overturned trash can lid.
The first factor you need to consider if you want to reduce mosquitoes is standing or stagnant water resources in your yard. Consider the places where plants are watered, and consider water troughs, fish ponds, koi ponds, bird baths, kiddie pools, and other potential water sources for mosquito breeding.
Too much shade can draw mosquitoes
Do you like lots of plants? Do you like to sit in the shade? These are good. But you're not the only one who likes plentiful plants and lots of shade. Like your plants, mosquitoes dry out in the sun. When they enter your yard, they're going to head straight for humid and shaded spaces. Dense vegetation traps moisture, and shade blocks the sun.
You can deter mosquitoes by pulling weeds, cutting grass, and addressing areas of dense vegetation. It is nice to have plants, but you don't want too many. As for shade, there isn't much you can do about that, but limiting dense vegetation will make it less likely that mosquitoes will hang out near your home even if you have shade.
If your yard provides a food source, mosquitoes will come
A beautiful yard has lots of plants and shade. Mosquitoes will come to lay eggs in stagnant water, hide in dense vegetation, and buzz around in shaded places. Beautiful yards have something else that mosquitoes want: Food.
What do mosquitoes eat? You might think that they survive on blood, but that is not the case. Only females draw a blood meal, and they do it for the purpose of reproduction. Both male and female mosquitoes subsist on nectar and plant sap, which they get from flowers and the stems of certain plants. While we don't recommend removing all the flowers from your yard, you may remove flowering weeds to reduce available food for mosquitoes if this works for you.
Professional mosquito control in Phoenix
When you contact Greenway Pest Solutions for mosquito control, how do we help? We analyze your yard and identify breeding sites and hiding places. We give you insights about things you may correct to reduce mosquito populations. But, most of all, we provide effective treatments to target mosquitoes.
Our mosquito control program reduces the number of adult mosquitoes and treats areas where mosquitoes are developing so that they are unable to become adult mosquitoes that fly and bite. We also install mosquito traps that destroy mosquito eggs and take down the female mosquitoes that lay them.
Mosquitoes are irritating pests that leave itchy bites on your skin. But they're also vectors for West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis. Contact Greenway Pest Solutions for seasonal mosquito control in the Phoenix metro, and let our team drastically reduce the mosquito population in your outdoor living space. After all, life is so much better without mosquitoes in your yard.
