Think Outside the Box To Control Insects

Think "Out(side) of the Box" to Control Insects Save money. Save the environment. Bugs sure can bug us. There are over a million, yes 1,000,000, species of insects with populations estimated way beyond the trillions living on the Earth with us. Sooner or later, most likely sooner, species like mosquitoes and moths, Japanese Beetles, black flies, carpenter ants and carpenter bees are going to be eating us. Really. They'll be biting on our bodies, our greenery, our food, our clothes and our homes. Controlling insects is a must, but maybe continuously spreading poisonous chemicals should not the only answer. Thinking "out of the box" is the current way to refer to utilizing uncommon, creative, often never before tried methods to find solutions to problems. It's as if all the known solutions and the methods to get to those solutions can be considered in the "already box," and we are challenged to think in the non-standard way about what's possibly available "outside." Always think "out of the box" when you search to design or decorate, to solve any problem or issue, and to fix what's broken. Don't only use what you can buy "off the shelf" which works right away as it comes out of the box from which it came... We wouldn't be here "on the 'net" if it wasn't for thinkers who went "out of the box" to create such things as the vacuum tube in 1907 and the first computer in 1938, then the transistor in 1947, and in the best example of all, two men working separately in 1959 came up with the integrated circuit. IC's use semiconductor crystals which were totally dismissed as electronically useless at the time of first vacuum tube. How about that? Here are the best of the extremely uncommon insect control ideas available that are "out of the box." The list below tells of these FREE or low cost and environmentally friendly ways to control insects that make a pest of themselves: PUT UP BIRDHOUSES Place several of them in different sizes in different locations around your property. Get different species in different sizes this way. Baby birds need to be fed insects. They can't digest grain, seed, or worms yet. So, even bird species that aren't insect eaters consume many of the bugs that bug us. An increase in birds will mean a decrease in the insect population. It's as simple as that. Besides, watching the lunatic antics of our "fine feathered friends" can be downright entertaining. In the 1930's, it was a man who made Purple Martin birdhouses in his woodshop that began the now deeply entrenched lie how these birds eat up to 2,000 mosquitoes per day. It was creative advertising. He was thinking "out of the box," you see. During the great depression the man himself was ravenously hungry and going broke. Other birds that come along with the Purple Martin like eating mosquitoes far more, but none will ever eat anywhere near 2,000 in a day. Bats are the best mosquito munchers. PUT UP BIRDFEEDERS By attracting lots of birds to your property, adding to their number, you'll help subtract from the number of insects you don't want. By keeping the moms and dads healthy, you'll help more insect eating baby birds get born. Birdseed in the 50-pound bag really costs very little. BATS ARE BEST, SO PUT UP A BATBOX A single bat can eat 1000 or more mosquitoes in a single night. This has been scientifically documented. Here you're getting a "fun factoid." Well, here's another potentially fun factoid -batboxes are very small, like bats are themselves. So their houses are also small. Read that as cheap and quick to build. Bats avoid all chemical odors because most will get them sick. It's true. Even a clean piece of wood from the lumber yard which is kiln-dried won't do for batboxes because of the chemicals like Wollmanizing Salts and zinc chromate which are added in the kiln. Forget about plastics, or plywood, composition wood, masonite and the like because you can't use glue. The wood pieces you'll need are all 6 inches and less in size. Just slap together the small boxes with untreated, unfinished raw wood only. It's a quick, simple pennies-to-build kind of project.connected with screws or nails. Be sure not to hang the box on walls near doorways. There are several websites with plans you'll find just by typing "batbox" in your favorite search engine. CREATE A LIZARD HABITAT If it is alright to do it, bring 'em home. When you see one, catch it in a can or box with some airholes and release it near a rock wall at your home. No rock wall? Just pile some rocks from your property where you think the lizard will be happy. Do another websearch and find what will make the best spot for a lizard family where you live. Be sure you take the lizard from a place where you won't accidentally be breaking a law, like "theft of wildlife from within a park." Private property is the best. Nockamixon State Park, for example, over 5,000 acres just 13 miles from our Highland Hill Farm home, has a simple rule, "Don't Take Anything!" But there's a special time of year, similar to the season for hunting deer, where "lizard hunts, etc." are encouraged. You could always go to a pet store too. DON'T FORGET SALAMANDERS & NEWTS Like lizards, these little reptiles eat bugs too. Newts mostly eat worms and fish eggs, but one little 23-gram, less than an ounce, baby Spotted Salamander eats its weight every three or four days, growing to a 125-gram, 4-ounce adult that is as much as 9-inches long. How does it get there? By eating insects and insect larvae along with worms and other salamanders. BRING HOME FROGS AND TOADS If your landscape has a suitable place for these critters, they'll each eat countless bugs in a day. Best of all, most frogs and toads are cheap to buy if you have to go to a pet store. BRING HOME A PRAYING MANTIS NEST If you see a praying mantis nest, bring it home and place in on one of your most valued shrubs. It is a superbly beneficial "beetle removing device." Again, be aware of the laws governing your source location removing the nest. Would you believe there are about 2,000 species of Praying Mantis, or "Mantids" as biologists call them? BRING HOME A SKUNK Catch a skunk. Perhaps there's one that's an issue at a friend's home. Get a "Have-a-Heart" trap, you know, the wire basket boxlike traps that the ASPCA and all the animal shelters use. Place a blanket over the trap. When you get "lucky" and there's a skunk inside, don't make any sudden moves, don't bang the trap, or your luck will end in amidst a cloud of bad odor. Slowly cover the trap with a blanket in a manner that the skunk never sees you, just the blanket. Ever so slowly, bring home the skunk in the back of an open truck, then ever so gently, release it at your property. These smelly old-timers love to eat grubs and cutworms. Having them live near vegetable gardens or expensive trees and shrubs that you just transplanted will truly help the odds for them to thrive. Remember to observe where the skunk settles and place a warning sign there. As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Walk softly and carry a big stick." The big stick here is to use for mounting your sign, that is. DO NOT KILL YOUR SNAKES These slithering reptiles eat mice, bugs, and beetles. Yes, the gardener's worst pest around here in Bucks County, PA, the Japanese Beetle, is "comfort food" for snakes. Of the 102 different snakes in all of North America only 20 are poisonous and they're the biggest ones. Pencil-thin little snakes for your yard and garden are certainly not a problem. The venomous, read that as poisonous, Copperhead and Massasauga Snakes may be as small as two feet long, but they're also over an inch in diameter. Just don't get close to these guys, okay? No reaching into hollow logs or under large rocks unless you check first. NEVER PLACE BEETLE TRAPS NEAR YOUR HOUSE Do you hate Japanese Beetles? Give them away. Seriously. Never place a beetle trap close to your house on your own property, unless all residents of your area are attempting to control beetles. The reason is, beetle traps work by attracting the beetles. You will get rid of the relative few beetles that are around your house or garden, yet you'll most likely attract even more beetles to the very spot where you are vulnerable. If you are "trap-minded," the best idea is to give the traps away. Yes, "It is better to give than to receive." This old Bible-derived quote is even good for Japanese Beetles which are successfully controlled using the environmentally safe low-impact traps that use food and sex to bring 'em in. Japanese Beetle traps are usually made as a bag that you hang about 4 to 5 feet off the ground. It is never a good idea to place them near your plants that the Japanese Beetles will eat. So I simply suggest you give the traps to your neighbors at Christmas! Actually, if you want, hang the traps on open-space trees near your property boundary. Thus, the beetles will be directed away from your house and the critical portion of your property. What we do on our farms is to hang traps on the branches of the trees that overhang our ponds. Then we open up the bottoms of the beetle traps. The trapped little buggers fall into the ponds and our fish eat them up, growing ever bigger. What a way to recycle and not have to empty the traps! You do know we invite customers to come fish our ponds, right? Just give us a call first. Some of the affected popular plants and trees favored by Japanese Beetles are: Annual Aster flower Astilbe, False Spirea flower Canna Lilly flower Cosmos flower Daylilly flower Delphinium flower Hollyhock flower Iris flower Marigold flower v Peony flower Rose flower Zinnia flower Linden tree Purple plum tree After you sign up for our mailing list on our website, you will receive more of our unusual gardening and landscape tips along with the many FREE tree and plant offerings from surpluses we have. We invite to go to our website at http://www.seedlingsrus.com Hope to see you soon, Bill