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Reduce Bugs In Your Patio Area With These Tips

by Adrienne Wild
Adrienne Wild

Adrienne started her professional life as a gardener at her local parks department and went on to train at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh where she was the first female student on the prestigious and world-renowned horticultural course run by the Botanic garden. An experienced and award-winning garden writer and past editor of some of Britain’s favourite gardening magazines, Adrienne has for over 30 years, inspired gardeners with a breadth of gardening know-how plus creative and decorative ideas. One of her main aims is to make gardening accessible, even to the smallest green fingers, with her clear advice and straightforward step-by-step instructions. Adrienne loves to travel and has visited, given talks and met ordinary home gardeners in far flung places like China, South Africa, Philippines and Caribbean as well as the UK.

Last Updated: April 2, 2021

How To Reduce Bugs Impact In Your Patio Area

Patios are as pleasant as bugs are unpleasant. All we might want to do is to enjoy the barbeque, chat with friends, feel the warmth of the evening breeze on our faces when bugs come along to spoil the party!

1. Invest in outdoor ceiling fan

Outdoor ceiling fans are a great investment. Their oscillating motions deter flies and mosquitoes, chiefly by the wafting away of the carbon dioxide spewing out of your mouth, second by second. Bugs also turned on by our sweat, lactic acid, and body heat; ceiling fans help the evaporation process on the skin, leaving bugs with less to interest them. As you manage humans’ body heat, you can also manage the patio area’s temperature, lowering it. This makes the whole area less attractive to those pesky flying irritants.

rotating ceiling fan

2. Clean gutters

Gutters are an essential attribute of any house; dirty gutters are like an all-you-can-eat buffet for irritating, ravenous little earwigs, ants, and mosquitoes. Clogged up gutters are a sure source of water and food; not only that but they encourage these insects to breed and virtually make your home their home! If you don’t want uninvited guests, remove their food source, and get your gutters professionally cleaned. Better still, do it yourself.

3. Citronella candles

These candles are a time-honored, natural pest control method, very useful after dark. They can be purchased in a whole array of styles, not just the old, mass-produced cluster of unimaginative blobs. They also provide extra light and a little ambiance for guests who actually were invited. Uninvited bugs, on the other hand, won’t feel at all welcome, they hate citronella!

scented candle on the porch

4. Teabag therapy

What citronella is to mosquitoes, peppermint tea bags are to ants. By strategically placing them in the cracks of your decking, or perhaps just around the edge, they will serve as an anti-ant line of defense. They could also be put around your paving stone patio or hidden cunningly in flower pots or table decorations, thus discouraging ants from going on the rampage.

5. Plant Marigold

Marigolds are despised by mosquitoes and a whole host of other common pests. Consider planting some around the perimeter of your outdoor living area; they could even serve as attractive pot plants that can strategically be positioned in the corners of your porch or on tables near to your seating area. Humans love them, bugs hate them – win, win!

marigold in the garden

6. Homemade sachets

Rather than some store-bought bug zapper that needs batteries and ends up malfunctioning in a few months, turn to your kitchen instead; get some bay leaves and/or cloves. Fashion little sachets into which these ingredients are placed. They could even be affixed to the backs of chairs so that guests will become immune from those pesky flies who can’t abide them.

7. Peppermint grenades

Peppermint tea bags are one thing, peppermint oil dabbed on cotton balls another. These can be made to look quite stylish, and humans just love the scent. Spiders, on the other hand, and various other bugs will flee them like the plague.

peppermint essential oil

8. Fire in the hole

Fire pits are great for barbeques, as a design feature, or perhaps even to keep warm late into the night. They can also function as pest repellants; simply add some sage or rosemary on to the fire and those annoying mosquitoes and other bugs will be compelled to buzz off.

9. Go artificial

Synthetic turf is very much less attractive to insects than the real thing. Ants and fleas adore natural grass, so getting Astroturf or some such grass substitute, will take away their lawn-squatting joy. Scarab beetles such as June bugs and Japanese beetles particularly like laying their eggs in natural grass – not if it’s not there! Their usual breeding habits and plant-eating ways will no longer be an option.

artificial-grass-installation

10. Use citronella oil

Citronella oil, not just in candle-form, contains chemical properties that bugs hate. It actually conceals the smell of carbon dioxide and lactic acid, things which insects adore. It’s completely non-hazardous to humans; in fact, we’ve been using it in food as a flavoring for well over fifty years! There are numerous ways in which citronella oil could be dabbed here and there, thus turning off insects and leaving you and your guests at ease.

These are just some tips to help you in your fight against the uninvited bug. Hopefully, you can see how home-made natural remedies are best; and of course, a stylish, oscillating outdoor ceiling fan will also make a huge difference. They are like the blades of a helicopter, and all your other natural potion and kitchen ingredients are like the soldiers, going to protect you from bug attack! There are, of course, various bits of tech which can also be very helpful, but that’s for another article. These are things you can do right now, simply by reaching into your kitchen cupboard and being a bit creative.

Source:

  1. Tips for Dealing with Bugs in the Outdoors – Leave No Trace
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