Reducing The Summer Bugs in Your Yard

Introduction

You know it’s summer when the foliage on trees gets thicker, and the garden is full of ladybugs, worms, and bees. While those bugs are beneficial for your yard, the summer season also increases the activity of harmful bugs like mosquitoes, grubs, and aphids. You can search for “landscape companies near me” and hire professionals to change your landscape for reducing those bugs. Let’s check out how you can reduce summer bugs in your yard.  

The Details

1. Eliminate standing water – Bird baths do look pretty in your garden. However, they can increase the bug population if you’re not careful. They can especially attract and increase the number of mosquitoes on your property. Standing water in bird baths and other such structures in your yard is an ideal ground for breeding many pests. Mosquitoes like to breed over standing water and lay their eggs at an incredible rate. You would be surprised at how fast mosquitoes can breed and spike up ion population. 

That’s why it’s important to get rid of standing water from your property. If you have bird baths, get a water filtration system that recycles the water and keeps it clean without using harsh chemicals. On the other hand, you can also change out the water in the bird bath every day manually. Also, make sure to keep your gutters unclogged and uneven ground flattened so that water flows away and doesn’t sit in one spot.

2. Cover up food – Growing up you may have watched many animated movies where ants are associated with picnics. Turns out there’s a good reason for that creative freedom. Ants can smell food from far away and aren’t the only bugs who’ll get attracted to your backyard picnic or barbeque cookouts. If you plan to cook or have food in the backyard, make sure that it stays covered and far away from your tiny garden. Also, make sure to keep the garbage dump or can closed while it collects organic waste. 
3. Clean your garbage – Garbage, especially organic and rotting garbage attracts all kinds of pests like flies and ants. On trash day and certain other days, the trash dumpster needs to stay outside and that’s when the pests have a feast. Make sure to add protection for the trash. Keep those closed as much as possible and keep them far away from your yard or garden. You can also spray insect repellants around the dumpster and wash it down after the trash is collected. 
4. Invite birds and bats – Birds are a great help against pests and bugs. They can drastically reduce the insect population of your yard and also make your yard lively. You need to put out incentives and invite birds to your property so that they can feed on those pests. Build a birdhouse so that your feathered friends have a place to call home. 

You can add bird feeders around the birdhouse as well. If you’re building a birdbath or putting out water for birds, make sure to change the water every day. Dirty standing water discourages birds and invites mosquitoes. 

Apart from birds, you can also invite a lot of bats to take care of the pests in your yard. While birds may have had a bad reputation from movies and pop culture, they can be the greatest pest reduction force in your yard. In a single night, one bat can eat up to 6000 insects. If there are enough bats where you live, you wouldn’t be having the pest problem in the first place. 

Similar to the approach with birds, build a few houses for bats and hang them high. However, bat houses are fundamentally different from bird houses, and you may need to look up a few tutorials before you can build one. A couple of bats are all you need to thin out all the mosquitoes from your yard. 

5. Build bug traps – DIY enthusiasts would love this one since it helps them bring down the bug population of their yard while indulging in the joy of building something from scratch. Get a pet bottle and cut off the top. Flip it upside down and insert the cut-off portion back into the bottle so that it forms a funnel. Tape the cut pieces in this position and fill up the bottom of the bottle with whatever solution your target pest likes. Place such traps at different parts of the garden and check up on them once in a while. 
6. Burn citronella – Mosquitoes and other annoying bugs hate the smell of citronella. Citronella oil is crafted from a combination of grasses that repel bugs. You can buy citronella candles, incense, or infuser and burn them to repel away bugs. Moreover, it’s an all-natural solution that won’t put your health at risk. 
7. Mow the lawn – A lawn that has been neatly trimmed looks amazing and also keeps the bug population on the lower side. When your lawn grass grows tall, it provides shelter and food to all kinds of pests and bugs. Long grasses are also great for weeds to thrive in and weeds themselves attract plenty of pests. When you eliminate those weeds and reduce the height of the grass to a few inches, you make the environment inhospitable for bugs. 

While you mow the lawn, make sure to not miss out on hard-to-reach places like sidewalks and ditches. After you are done mowing the lawn, don’t let all the cut grass just rest in one spot for a long time. Throw them in the compost bin or mulch them for your yard. Deny residence to harmful bugs at all costs.  

Conclusion

Bugs are part of the summer season and let you know that’s the time of the year when nature gets busy. However, it’s important to not target beneficial bugs and only get rid of the pests during this hot season. On the other hand, if you need to make changes to the landscape for dealing with those bugs, you can search for “landscape companies near me” and hire pros for the job.

Danny Daniel