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Your friends at Gateway Thermal Solutions want you to be prepared and know how to prevent a bed bug infestation. Read on to learn common ways pests invade your home.
Bed bugs aren’t just for beds! Find out how most pests are able to invade your home!
Not the prettiest pictures I’ve ever posted, but worthy for gardening lessons learned.
On pill bugs and beetles ~
The downside of finally getting some rain last month, is that we’re now battling an infestation of pill bugs and Japanese beetles. They are NOT cute far as I’m concerned, for they eat our garden foods voraciously. Transplanting has been particularly frustrating: It’s heartbreaking to see the seedlings you nurtured for weeks in starter pots get decimated the first night you’ve planted them in the garden. Pill bugs do climb healthy plants (photo 3 is the result, and we’ve seen them up in the basil) and they act like tiny lumberjacks (photo 2) stripping the base of plants so they keel over and can be swarmed.
Spraying Neem oil alone has not worked in reducing their numbers - I swear there are billions of them - and picking them off isn’t practical: In addition to the sheer number of them, they mostly eat at night and retreat to cool dark places during the day.
We started fighting back by doing away with their favored habitats, reducing mulching, elevating any potted plants, and moving rocks away. Next step was to dry things up, only watering plants in the morning.
On a recent afternoon I cut water bottles apart, burying their bottom thirds around the garden, filling them with water as traps: The bugs get in to drink, but then drown when they can’t get out. There’s advice on the web to fill these watery graves with cheap beer (they get attracted to the smell), but I’ve found this isn’t necessary once their water sources dry up: Water works fine.
At first I thought the traps weren’t working, for they were empty in the morning. But then I noticed that the birds had discovered the traps as well, and have taken to visiting them for their breakfast: The traps are a ready-and-waiting bird buffet of bugs and water.
Another fringe benefit of using the water traps was discovering exactly which pests we needed to target when you don’t see nocturnal roamers: At first I blamed everything on the pill bugs (and believe me, they deserve the bulk of the blame), but the water traps helped me see all the Japanese beetles, and thus I continue with my Neem spraying as well.
Would love to hear from others with more tips! More about the critters on Wikipedia: Armadillidiidae
