Many people are looking to be do it yourself’ers around their home, but do things like hedge apples really even work as a home remedy for pest control?
The downside to do-it-yourself pest control
Not to say that there aren’t any effective methods to reduce pests around your home, but when it comes to using do-it-yourself methods alone and home remedies for pest control they don’t always get the best results.
The best home remedy you can use isn’t some magic potion or fruit, but sanitation and exclusion, which is sealing cracks and crevices and entry points around your home. Most pest issues get their start from outside the home, and if you can prevent them from getting in to begin with, it can go a long way to reduce pest numbers.
Some simple things you can do is adding weather stripping, door sweeps, and sealing cracks and entry points around your home. This can certainly be a costly and tedious activity and in most cases it is impossible to seal each entry point 100% of the time, but it can be effective to reduce pest numbers significantly.
When it comes to home remedies for pest control versus pest control products that a pest control service can use there are some differences as well. Many over-the-counter pest control methods or home remedies can be effective to some degree, but in many cases they don’t have any kind of residual effect.
This residual effect (or lack thereof) is important because it may work to get rid of pests to some degree, but it is only a temporary solution in many cases and may only kill or ward off pests for a short time. The residual effects from products that a pest control service tend to last a month or longer and can resist things like rain and weather.
Can hedge apples work as a home remedy for pest control?
This rumor has been around for a long time; some people swear by them, while others say they cause more harm then good, but what really happens. Researchers have taken this question on and found that while hedge apples do have some chemicals that have been shown to ward off pests (similar chemical properties to some portions of professional products), the amount in these hedge apples are in such low quantities that they aren’t effective on a significant enough scale to report.
Further still, as these fruits rot, they can actually even attract pests to the rotting fruit. There are some aspects of hedge apples that could be extracted and concentrated and used as a form of pest control, but leaving them out around your yard most likely won’t make much difference to keep pests out.
Other natural remedies for pest control that can work
Again, when it comes to natural or do-it-yourself pest control, your best options are going to be exclusion, sanitation, and prevention rather than your own home remedies. It’s much easier to prevent pests than to get rid of them after you have an issue.
Using mayonnaise to get rid of lice can be one home remedy that gets results. This is an interesting one, but it can be effective. The main thing this does is end up suffocating the lice, so you could use mayonnaise or a pest control product to get similar results. The difficult thing with the mayonnaise is getting enough on without air pockets that the lice will find harborage in. It also can be messy – especially when leaving it in long enough to be effective.
You can make your own makeshift fly traps with rotting meat, sugary drinks, or fruit as a base foundation to attract the flies, and then fill the container with water to a point where the flies drown, but unless you address the source, you could just have an endless game of catch occurring. Make an entry point in such a way where flies enter then becoming trapped and can’t get out. You can see an article of some effective home made traps here http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Fly-Trap
This fly trap method does only kill adult flies though, so it might not really get to the root of the issue. This is why we again recommend reaching out to a pest control service for help with any pest issues as they will treat for both the current problem as well as the cause and all life stages of pests.
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