Home-Produced Pesticides The idea of having bugs running about the home, going where they like, is fairly disgusting to most people. The ides of bugs running around you while you are asleep or foraging off your food in the pantry is rather off-putting as well. Most people go straight to the hardware store to buy insect spray and poison. However, nowadays, lots of people are worried about using sprays because of the depletion of the ozone layer and because sprays kill indiscriminately. Poisons may also be arbitrary killers of insects, unless the poison is specific to one pest insect or a group of pest insects. However, there are other ways of targetting pest insects using traditional ways, some of which have been placed in sprays and liquids and called modern. Lots of people already have these insect killers in their food cupboard or garden shed, which will come as a big surprise to them. OK, you may not have boric acid in the kitchen, but it is easy to purchase and if you add it to sugar and a little water or cola, ants and cockroaches will lick it up. However, boric acid is indigestible to these bugs and it sets in their stomachs leaving no room for real food. Unable to regurgitate it and unable to consume anything else, they will starve to death. You can distribute it in small puddles on shards of glass or tile or soak balls of cotton wool in the mixture and leave them lying in corners where other animals cannot go like behind a couch that is situated against a wall. You can use boric acid against termites too, but you need to employ a different tactic. Termites eat wood and hence the difficulty, they will not take boric acid and sugar. However, if you mix the boric acid with paraffin or propylene glycol or even a thin oil, the liquid will take the boric acid into the wood. If the liquid does not ward off the termites or after it has evaporated and worn off, the boric acid will still remain there to kill the foraging termites. This is best used as a preventative method. If you have a serious infestation of termites, you require professional help ASAP. Boric acid, also called borax, will also kill silverfish, but you need a different tactic again. Silverfish can survive on amounts of food that we are not able to even see. Therefore, if you mix boric acid, flour and water into a very thin liquid, you could dip a rag into it and wipe it over surfaces that you do not use frequently like window cills, the insides of cupboard doors and the bottom of wardrobes. It will remain there for years and as silverfish, ants or cockroaches come along, there is a good chance that they will find it and consume it, causing their demise. There are other home things that may be used as well. Cornflour is indigestible to cockroaches, so a piece of stale bread soaked in this and water will also kill.
Diatomaceous earth is helpful against cockroaches and bed bugs, but it will not kill them, it merely destroys their protective waxy coat to permit chemical insecticides to do their work. Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several subjects, but is at present involved with how to get rid of pests. If you would like to know more, visit our web site at Bugs Infestation.