Exterior pest control refers to outdoor pest management strategies adopted to keep a wide range of pests at bay. It’s no secret that all pest issues find their way into your home outside.
A comprehensive way to deal with pests will be to call for interior and exterior pest control measures.
Home Exterior Pest Control Guide
In this article, we’ll be focusing more on exterior pest control. To significantly reduce pest infestations in homes, your surroundings will have to be taken care of.
You may adapt different approaches based on the type of pest issues you have.
What Types of Pests Issues will require Exterior Pest Control?
Sometimes, homeowners may be confused about when to call for exterior pest control services.
The truth is, lots of pest issues have their origins from outside. By combining interior and exterior pest control measures, you adopt a more comprehensive treatment strategy.
A wide range of pest issues around your yard will require exterior pest treatments. These include spiders, ants, ticks, fleas, box elder beetles, wasps, hornets, mice, mosquitoes, ticks, springtails, and chiggers.
There are lots and lots of others, including wildlife, that may require professional external pest control.
You Have a Responsibility As Well
To rid your home surroundings of all pests, it’s important to know about your responsibilities. You have a primary role in making your yard uninviting to pests.
It’s important to know that pests are attracted to food, water, and shelter, and you might unknowingly make your yard ideal by making these available.
So, before you call for pest control, consider performing simple maintenance tasks such as tipping over or disposing of receptacles that hold rainwater.
Any form of moisture collecting around is likely to serve as breeding spots for mosquito larvae.
Even tiny water receptacles such as empty bottle lids, cans, and anything that moisture can collect in. You’ve eliminated a possible breeding ground for pests by tipping these over or disposing of them.
How much work do you put into maintaining your yard?
How well you maintain your yard will determine if you’ll have a pest issue to contend with or not. You can begin by cleaning all debris from window wells and clearing all woodpiles and brushes around.
Is there leafy debris lying around? Have these cleared up regularly?
It would help if you emptied your fire bowls regularly. You can save yourself the stress by simply drilling a hole at the bottom to help drain out water collecting in such. Look around your yard and get rid of all standing water.
These may be held in toys, birdbaths, ornamental ponds, etc.
With all of these actions taken, you’re making it less likely for pests to visit your yard. This will also reduce the need for frequent exterior pest treatments.
Is DIY Exterior Pest Control Effective?
When exterior pests are identified, there’s a temptation to adopt a DIY treatment approach in fixing the problem.
While the right actions may be helpful to a certain degree, it’s never as effective as having a pro come around to carry out thorough inspection and treatments.
You can only do so much as a DIY’er because your knowledge is mostly limited. Having an idea of pest behavior and the degree or extent of spread is crucial to your response level.
Without such understanding, you’re hardly going to be able to fix any issues.
At best, you might have temporary relief only for the pest issue to reappear with a vengeance. The best way to avoid this cycle of infestation is to have a professional come around to conduct a more comprehensive treatment.
This takes us to our next point, which has to do with calling a pro.
Calling for Exterior Pest Control
Having identified a pest problem, the natural inclination will call for professional help. This tends to be a more comprehensive way to deal with pest issues than DIY strategies.
Having called a professional, an inspection visit is scheduled where your entire yard is carefully inspected for pest presence.
Experienced pest technicians seek to identify the hotspots of pest activity. The yard and perimeter are covered during such inspections. Based on findings, the most appropriate treatment options are chosen.
Most professional pest control services will allow owners to make an input or pick a treatment option.
This largely depends on your needs as the client. For example, you may be more interested in using environmentally friendly treatment strategies over the use of chemicals.
With this preference, pest management services make adjustments to cater to your needs.
One of the likely decisions to be made is using organic pesticides. These pesticides have no negative effects on the environment. They’re not as toxic as chemical pesticides are to humans and pets.
However, they do the job of eliminating the pest problem.
The downside to using organic pesticides is that they may not have prolonged residual effects as chemical pesticides do. This may require more frequent visits to your property.
Having performed the needed inspection, there needs to be a preparation of the area before proper treatment.
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Preparation for Treatment
Treatment only commences when necessary preparations are made.
If you have a fish pond in your yard, you’ll need to turn off circulation pumps and cover the pond with an appropriate covering such as a tarp. Of course, the tarp needs to be secured on all sides.
This covering should only be removed when treatment is completed, and it’s safe enough to do so. Items scattered around the yard, such as pet toys and the likes, should be collected and covered.
You should have pet dishes emptied or removed, or overturned.
An overgrown lawn will require mowing before the day of treatment. It’s necessary to discuss with your technician whether pesticides are safe enough for pets to be around after treatment.
Pets will have to be taken indoors or put on a leash away from the treatment area.
Exterior pest control involves all of the steps discussed here. It’s best to allow a professional to perform all treatments as they’re well trained, skilled, and experienced for such.