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Anyone with a nice garden, patio or deck will certainly enjoy sitting outside on a bright summer’s day or evening. But if there is one thing that can spoil it for you, it is mosquitoes.

Sometimes, it only takes one of two determined mosquitoes to make your blood boil. Mosquitoes are a pest for sure, but they can also be a health hazard, spreading dengue fever and malaria and several other truly horrible illnesses. So how do you go about keeping mosquitoes out of your backyard?

Perhaps you cannot realistically hope to keep mosquitoes out of your backyard completely, but there are some measures you can take to deter them and hold their numbers down. Preventing them breeding in your garden is the first step to take. Mosquitoes do not have a long flying range, many of the mosquitoes that trouble you in your backyard will have been born in your garden.

Mosquitoes lay their eggs in stagnant water, so make sure that there is none in your backyard. They will lay eggs in water butts, dogs’ bowls, water that has collected in old tyres, bottles and tins and your waste cans, so make sure that no water can collect anywhere. Blocked gutters are another breeding location. If you have a water feature, breed fish in it to eat the larvae.

Mosquitoes hate the smell of lemon, so you can grow citronella plants, lemon thyme, lemon grass and even a lemon tree, if the climate is correct. Otherwise you could burn citronella scented candles or oil nearby They not just keep the mosquitoes away, but the smell is very fresh and envigourating.

If they are still pestering you, you might have to rely on mosquito repellent. You could imbue your clothing with permethrin, like the army does for jungle warfare or just rub a deet-based product on your skin. There are also plenty of natural mosquito repellents as well, such as lemon oil, citronella and eucalyptus oil.

Garlic is said to deter mosquitoes, so you could try growing garlic nearby. It is also believed to deter ticks and has proven to discourage greenfly (aphids) from roses. What could be better, especially if you are partial to garlic as well?

You could put up one or two of those lamps that attract insects to them and them kill them with a high voltage current. These electric insect killers are especially useful for killing mosquitoes and household flies, which can also be a nuisance when you are sitting outside.

They are inexpensive and will last for years. They give off a pleasing glow and some claim to be able to clear spaces of a quarter, a half and even a full acre of land of all flying insects by the use of the ultraviolet light and pheromones.

By using some or all of the above ways of keeping mosquitoes out of your backyard, you ought to be able to enjoy your drink, a chat or a doze in complete peace and freedom from flies and mosquitoes.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with Insect Exterminator problems. If you would like to know more, go over to our website at Bugs Infestation.

So, you have got some time off work, university or school and you want to sit outdoors and relax. Possibly even go on holiday somewhere.

What a great idea! Nevertheless what occurs when you arrive at where you are going? The mosquitoes come out to bother you.

If it were not so everyday, it would sound like Freddy Kruger and Nightmare on Elm Street. The female mosquitoes want blood to create eggs and they seek it out as avidly as any vampire in a horror film, whereas the males go sucking nectar from plants like bees.

Well, that is the nightmare scenario, but it is not that far from the truth either. For many peoples in the world it is also a genuine life and death issue. Millions of people die every year from malaria and tons more from dengue too.

Yet both of these illnesses are curable as are most of the other mosquito-borne illnesses like Yellow Fever, Japanese Jungle Encephalopathy and West Nile fever.

The first thing to understand is that usually these illnesses can be inoculated against, particularly if you are going on vacation. The next thing to keep in mind – it may help – is that not all mosquitoes are the same.

For instance, in Thailand, the dengue-bearing mosquito (frequently known as the ‘Egyptian’ mosquito) comes out at dawn and dusk and so bites then too. Between around an hour before and after dawn and an hour before and after dusk, whereas the malaria-carrying mosquito, the Anopheles, is a night time huntress.

I am not suggesting that you can relax your guard during the day, although many people assume that they can. Nobody wants dengue fever either.

So, what can you do? Before you go anywhere, read up on the area or check with medical specialists. That part is not difficult, especially, if you know how to search the Net.

Then prepare yourself with inoculations if the risk is significant enough in your opinion or a medical expert’s judgment. In my estimation, that is the minimum that a conscientious person ought to be expected to do to protect him or herself, the family and the community at large.

Then there are a few other things you can do. For example, wear voluminous clothes, but long sleeves and long trousers. If you are thin on top by choice or not, wear a hat or cap.

Dress in socks or stockings in the evening to safeguard your toes. Get a good-quality mosquito repellent and put it on your exposed skin, as often as recommended by the manufacturer, which is typically every four or five hours.

You could rationally stop at that point, but I like to go a bit further, if the circumstance calls for it. If I am outdoors in the garden at home or in a hotel, I like to have one of those tennis racquet style electric bug zappers with me. They are fantastic for zapping the odd mosquito that irritates you.

They are good for clearing the bedroom before sleeping too and lastly, if I am renting, walking, camping or caravaning, I may find room for a rechargeable lantern-style bug zapper as well.

If the little so-and-sos are going to give me a fever, they are going to have to work really hard to do it.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is currently concerned with Insect Exterminator problems. If you would like to know more, go over to our website at Bugs Infestation.

There are times when it just seems that there are much more insects than ever before. Maybe it is the milder winters and wetter summers allowing them to breed more easily, or maybe it is because not so many people are using insecticides in their gardens.

It is fairly understandable that a lot of people do not want to use chemicals on their gardens, but not using anything at all results in a growth in the insect numbers.

During the last fifty or more years, people had gotten more and more accustomed to using chemical insecticides to poison household and garden insect pests because they are a quicker and definite killer.

So what do you do if you want to manage the number of backyard insect pests, but do not like to spread chemicals?

Well, you would have to revert to utilizing natural insect pest killers, although most families have forgotten what their great-grandparents used to use to eradicate bugs. The following is a list of a few of the natural methods of killing insect pests. However, not all techniques or plants will be obtainable in all countries.

Stinging nettles: if you cut down a clump of stinging nettles and immerse them in water for a week or more, chemicals will come out of the plants into the water. Strain the water off and spray it onto your plants. It will kill or put off a great deal of garden insects. You can also use it as a plant food, but you will have to be careful how concentrated it is.

Rotenone: is a biological insecticidal. It is manufactured from the roots of the derris plant. It kills by damaging the stomachs of insects. However, it is rather slow-acting and needs to be reapplied often in order to obtain the utmost effect. Do not use it near fish though.

Washing Up Water: soapy water of any sort will kill green fly amongst other backyard insect pests. This is a very easy control to administer. Simply strain your soapy water into a spray gun (like an empty window cleaner spray gun) and blast your greenfly.

Corn meal: you can dust this about plants or skirting boards to kill insects. If a tomato hornworm or a cockroach eats some, the corn meal| will swell up in the insect’s stomach with the bodily fluids in there and the insect will eventually explode.

Pyrethrum: made from geraniums: will paralyze an insect, but it will also wear off, so it is frequently mixed with a poison to kill the insect off. Otherwise, you can sweep them up.

A mixture of cow’s milk, flour and water can be used as a natural insecticide, funnily enough. It is very efficient at killing the eggs of insects. It also destroys insects themselves by blocking their breathing holes. In other words, they asphyxiate.

Neem is a very common tree in India and has medicinal as well as insecticidal applications. This natural insecticide repels insects by means of an active constituent that mimics an insect hormone. It makes it difficult, if not impossible, to digest food and it blocks their cycle of reproduction. It works most effectively of all on insects that primarily consume leaves.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on many subjects, but is at present involved with Insect Exterminator problems. If you would like to know more, go over to our website at Bugs Infestation.