GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

23-06-2006, 01:13 PM posted to alt.home.lawn.garden,misc.rural

wrote:
We live in a semi-rural area - houses 100 yards or so apart - and
have a serious problems with mosquitos bedding down around the house in
shrubs, etc. There's a row of holly next to the garage, for example,
if you agitate it with a stick, HUNDREDS of mosquitos come pouring out.
They're also collecting under our deck, and a couple of other places.

I tried spraying the holly very thoroughly, inside and out, with a
general purpose insecticide from Home Depot - triazine, something like
that, it was in a red plastic bottle. It had NO effect on the
mosquitos. What can we spray these places with to kill them? How about
malathion? And please, bunny-huggers and anti-pesticide loonies, don't
bother..

Thanks
Ron M. in central Texas

Have you considered sneaking some of those bats from under that bridge
in Austin?
All kidding aside. After we successfully evicted the bat colony from
our attic, we began to notice the mosquitoes as an annoyance. In the
succeeding 2 years, the external bat house acquired tenants, there is
evidence that they're present in some of the outbuildings, (but nothing
like what it was like when the breeding colony was in the house) and
the mosquito population has fallen back below the annoyance threshold.

Or you could try attracting Purple Martins

And if all else fails, see if you can locate one of those "Yard Fogger"
type aerosol cans and fog the living daylights out of the holly bushes.

--
The biggest problem with our bounty of coal is not what it does
to our mountains or the atmosphere, but what it does to our minds.
It preserves the illusion that we don't have to change our lives.
Given the profound challenges we face with the end of cheap oil
and the arrival of global warming, this is a dangerous fantasy.