Vampire movies are big right now, but most people don’t want their blood sucked by mosquitoes.

They don’t want flies biting them, either, or landing on platters of food.

Get rid of those pesky insects, without spraying clouds of toxic chemicals all over your yard.

Let’s start with interrupting the life cycle of the mosquito:

In the warm water of summer, a mosquito can run through its life cycle in ONE WEEK.

So go dump any standing water (home to mosquito eggs, larvae and pupas) right now. We’ll wait.

Back? Great.

If you have standing water you don’t want to drain (bird baths and ponds) you should add tiny Bt donuts that will kill the mosquitoes but not harm other insects or animals.

You can eradicate breeding areas with these two techniques, but what about mosquitoes that fly in from other yards? A mosquito can fly several miles. Foil them with a garlicky spray, Mosquito Barrier. The garlic smell will go away quickly, but the sulfur will remain and it’s toxic to mosquitoes. Spray Mosquito Barrier all over your lawn and shrubs—even your vegetables, they won’t pick up a garlic flavor. It keeps ticks and fleas away too.

Put up a Vacancy sign at your new Bat House and add some mosquito-eating wildlife to your garden.

What about those flies?

The old-fashioned sticky strips work, hanging on their own, or partly shielded by a cover. To attract more flies, use a trap that has special bait (like our Flies Be Gone or Wood Fly Trap) and hang it in the shade away from your outdoor sitting area.

Organic gardeners love natural predators—for flies those would be Praying Mantids and parasitic mini-wasps aka Fly Parasite Complex. The mini-wasps will be busy with the flies and uninterested in vertebrates.

Good wasp, bad wasp

Hooray for the mini-wasps, boo for the big wasps. In the video, Tricia shows our Yellowjacket & Wasp Trap, which can hang or stand anywhere you like.

Imagine—a summer free of mosquitoes and flies.  See the products in action in our new video about Pesky Insects.

Wishing you a summer where you never hear that eeeee mosquito sound in your ear!

The University of California Integrated Pest Management site has a Pest Note with more information about mosquitoes as disease vectors.

Diagram courtesy of University of Arkansas