Natural Pest Control System
The best pest control system, does not consist of misting systems, electronic devices, pesticides, or nuclear blasts! The systems technology is ancient, simple, and changes little over time. The philosophy behind it has existed since the dawn of time, and it is almost infinitely expandable. It will not harm your health, the health of your neighborhood, or the health of the planet, and with basic skills, you can operate this system on your own, with no special licenses or permits.
The best home pest control system does require some planning, some forethought, and a little manual labor at the beginning, and some maintenance as time goes on, but these are all things that normal home maintenance requires anyway.
This system for controlling pests involves three parts: Prevention, followed by natural biological controls, and finally botanical products.
You can begin to use this pest control system from either end, that is, you can begin inside your home, and work outward toward the outside of your property and beyond, or you can start your pest control system from the outer edges of your property and work from there to the inside of your home.
Prevention
Starting indoors
If you begin inside the home, you will be beginning with exclusion. That simply means, that you seal any internal openings inside the home, where pests might gain entry, such as around window frames, cable and pipe entries, and other such gateways into your living space. Then you work to do the same thing on the outside of your home, and include such things as window screens, door sweeps, and weather stripping.
Landscape
The next step in this pest control system is in the landscape immediately around your home. You should do such things as trim shrubs at least a foot away from the edge of the home. Remove the mulch to a distance of a foot away from the foundation, trim any vines that are attached to walls, and prune shrubs and trees so that they do not touch your home.
Any pest control system would be incomplete without some mention of dealing with trees. Tree limbs, should not be touching your home, or be overhanging your roof in such a way, that they provide access to squirrels and other such small animals. The trees should be properly pruned to prevent infestation by insects and diseases.
The best pest control system for lawns
Regular mowing will help to keep the pest population down. Irregular mowing, will have the opposite effect. This is true of insect, and weed pests. Balance in irrigation, fertilization, and other cultural practices is important in any lawn care system, and proper lawn care, is important in any pest control system.
Clearing the edges
Clearing the edges of your property of brush and debris which feeds and harbors insects and rodents is an important part of this pest control system. Brush and debris is where your problem starts. If you don’t get rid of these problems, the other problems will grow, and the weeds, insects, and rodents will find a way to get into your lawn, landscape, and living space in time. This is one reason that we encourage people who use our pest control system to start with these areas first.
If you are ready to get started visit our pest control system pages.
Natural Biological pest control
The next step in our natural pest control system is the use of natural biological controls. I make a distinction between types of biological controls because some are a long way from being natural. The controls we use are those that are found as native controls in a given area. These will be encourage if your landscape is made as native to your area as possible. What we did in the first part of this system is pest prevention, and we accomplished this through modifying the habitat to make it less desirable to the pests. The second part, will make it more desirable to the predators of the pests that we are trying to get rid of.
Bats and birds consume many of the pests that we seek to be free of. Building a habitat suitable to these predators should cut down on the unwanted insect population. This involves finding out what native insect consumers exist in your area, and finding out how to welcome them to your home.
Such flying creatures as barn owls, will take care of the outdoor rodents, but what about the larger predators and critters? This goes back to the initial ideas of prevention by modifying our habits and habitats.
Botanical pest control
The third step in our pest control system is treatment. These treatment types begin with the least toxic treatments first. That is, botanical products used to get rid of remaining troublesome insects. There are some great products on the market.
We will provide more information on botanical pest control in a future post.