Can baking soda alone kill roaches? We’ll find out shortly.
Baking soda has been found to have lots of benefits. Apart from being used for food preparation, it’s also used for cleaning as well as pest control.
Speaking of pest control, will baking soda kill roaches?
These days, quite a good number of homeowners are interested in trying out home remedies for roach issues.
Baking soda is one product you’d find in almost any home due to its utilitarian nature. This product is effective against pests like slugs and ants.
However, what we want to find out is whether it has actually had any effect on roaches.
Baking Soda Roach Control
To fully appreciate the utilitarian nature of baking soda, it’s necessary to state some of its many uses.
This product can be used as a mouthwash, to treat heartburn, and to soothe canker sores. Other uses include being used to whiten teeth, as a deodorant, for relieving sunburns and itchy skin, and also for improving certain cancer treatments.
There are lots of other uses we can continue to mention.
However, this article is only focused on finding out if baking soda kills roaches. So, we’ll be holding off on the other uses of baking soda.
Using Baking Soda For Roach Extermination
Yes, they can! This wouldn’t be surprising considering the many uses of this product including its successful use in killing other pests like slugs and ants.
So, the fact that it can also be applied to roaches is only a confirmation of its many benefits.
While baking soda will readily kill roaches, these pests aren’t naturally attracted to it. There has to be some form of bait made with other ingredients. More details on this will follow shortly.
Now that you’ve found an additional use for your baking soda, you may be interested in knowing how it kills roaches.
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How Baking Soda Kills Roaches
To get rid of the nuisance posed by roaches, you’ll need to understand how baking soda works. This powder needs to be ingested to have any effect.
For this to happen, you’ll need to make a bait that attracts roaches.
Sprinkling baking soda around won’t do anything to assuage your roach issues. With baking soda as one of the main ingredients of your bait, roaches find this irresistible and would readily feast on such baits. When ingested, the action kicks in.
Roach bait infused with baking soda sets off a negative reaction in the digestive system of roaches. The gases produced will choke these creatures to death.
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How to Make Roach Bait Using Baking Soda
Remember, the reason why you’re making bait is to lure roaches to feast on it. Roaches don’t see baking soda as food and would pass by when the powder is sprinkled around.
However, when certain things are added? It easily attracts them.
It’s easy to make baking soda bait for roaches. There are several ways of doing this. One of them includes getting some granulated sugar, powdered vitamin C, and powdered yeast. Of course, your baking soda should be available too.
Now, pour equal parts baking soda and granulated sugar into a bowl and a little vitamin C and yeast. Mix these and pour them into small plastic containers for onward distribution to strategic points.
Strategic point refers to roach hotspots. These include your kitchen area among other places.
Roaches are unable to resist this bait and will pour out to feed at night when you’re asleep. Always check your bait to see if there are signs of ingestion. Before long, you should start seeing less of them or their dead bodies scattered around your home.
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Not Much is Needed to Make a Roach Bait
When treating (exterminating) roach infestations, you must understand the volume of ingredients required.
We earlier mentioned equal parts granulated sugar and baking soda. This doesn’t have to be much as roaches won’t consume all of it.
A single heaped tablespoon of both sugar and baking soda should suffice. The other ingredients such as vitamin C and powdered yeast should not be up to a teaspoonful.
Will Baking Soda be As Useful in Heavy Roach Infestation Scenarios?
Roach infestation differs by severity. There are times when a home will be heavily infested with significant roach populations nesting within a home. This can be really scary and rightfully so because of the heightened health risks.
It’s advisable to never allow your roach situation to reach this stage.
However, if you’re facing a difficult roach infestation, you can hardly kill these pests effectively. Here, deterrence is hardly achieved. Plus, the situation continues to spiral out of control.
In such cases, it may be time to call a pest management professional or service.
Expert Intervention
Under heavy roach infestations, there’s little you can do with baking soda. In such situations, it’s best to call for expert help. There are lots of professional pest management services nearest to your location.
You’ll need to carry out a company review to only choose the most reliable company for the job.
Your entire house is inspected and the problem is detected. An appropriate treatment approach is then selected and applied. Sometimes, technicians may revisit your home to find out if a treatment has achieved its aim.
When there’s a need for repeat treatment, this will be carried out to achieve complete roach extermination.
Preventive Treatments
However good an extermination method is, it’s never as effective as the adoption of a preventive approach. In other words, preventive treatment seeks to eliminate the chances of an infestation ever happening in the first place.
This approach can be adopted after treatment or before roaches ever become a problem. Simple preventive actions include good hygiene, cleaning the kitchen area of all food sources and splashes, as well as limiting the areas you eat.
Others include proper storage of foods in tightly closed containers, regularly emptying your trash, and vacuuming the kitchen floor each night before you go to sleep.
Seal all cracks or gaps used as entry points and also eliminate ideal nesting conditions such as leaky pipes etc.
Conclusion
Although baking soda can be used for roach extermination, it isn’t a foolproof or reliable strategy. You’ll need more comprehensive approaches to tackling the problem. You can also take a look at these homemade roach killers.
These include calling a pest management service and the adoption of preventive measures.