How to Protect Your Home and Backyard From Pests

Pest infestations can range from annoying and frustrating to downright dangerous and traumatic. They can damage furniture, as well as structures, kill your plants, contaminate your food, and even threaten your health and the health of your family. If you have issues with pests, your best bet is to deal with them immediately, before you end up with a major problem.

The key to pest control is to make your home less hospitable to pests. They’re usually after the same things as any animal: food, safety, and shelter. With this in mind, here are some ways to secure your home and garden from pest infestation and invasion.

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Find Out Where They’re Coming From

Your first step is to find out where pests might be coming from and block their entry into your home and garden. It’s easier to secure your home than your garden, because you can’t really stop insects and small animals from getting into your garden, even if you add fences. Animals can climb or burrow under walls and fences, and insects can either fly or climb over anything, as well as get through small spots.

As for your home, if you’ve noticed pests like ants or rats inside your home, look for holes where they can squeeze through. Block any gaps as well as you can.

Use Natural Deterrents

You can deter some pests naturally. Some herbs, such as thyme and yarrow, as well as other plants, can act as natural defenses against pests because they have strong scents.

These are great options for companion plants because they protect your plants and even your garden from otherwise bothersome pests. Even better, they look and smell nice to humans. Just check that they aren’t toxic for pets.

You can also use other natural deterrents or pest control, like releasing insects that hunt pests. Ladybugs are commonly used to control aphids, for example.

Remove Food Waste

You can often reduce the number of pests you have by making your home less attractive. Make sure to tidy up any food once you’re finished with it. If you have a compost bin, secure it against rats and other pests that might be interested in it, and only compost vegetable scraps and plant matter.

Use Safe Traps

While you can use a lot of different kinds of traps, if you have children or pets, you might be wary of poison or other traps that can hurt them. Instead, look into safe traps like vinegar traps for flies and insects, or camouflaged cages with bait for animals.

Call Pest Control

If you do have more pests than you can handle, the best and safest option is to call pest control as soon as possible. Professional exterminators can get rid of infestations and can even help you prevent them from happening again by identifying vulnerabilities.

You can call different specialists for different types of pests as well. For example, if you have bees and want them moved safely to a hive, you can call a specialist who will protect the colony and get it away from your property.

This is a contributed post.

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