Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Well, the rainy season has come and brought with it enough flooding to draw out the mosquitos. There's a corner of my land that isn't fit for man or beast even at high noon, there's a bog just off my property that is crawling with the devils.

I needed to retrieve some scrap metal that was left over there by the previous owner but I couldn't cut it free without getting eaten alive, and mosquitos usually aren't too much trouble for me. Well, I borrowed the wife's Off! and retrieved the metal.

Deet is the active ingredient in most of this stuff so I wanted to know what deet really was. Apparently it is quite synthetic, nothing I could really homebrew. Just by coincidence though I found a reference to something scientifically proven to be at least as effective as deet, beauty berry. Beauty berry contains three seperate chemicals that repel mosquitos and horseflies. The crushed leaves seem to be most used but there was a hint the berry might work, too.

The great thing about this is that beauty berry is native and grows near me. I think I might even have it on my property but I'll have to wait for the berries this fall to be sure. At any rate it can be grown in quantity, I'll have to experiment with making an essential oil of this stuff or something. There is a lovley symmetry in the natural world. While blood sucking mosquitos are a foul pest the remedy grows naturally nearby, yours for the taking if you only have the knowledge.

From what I could tell beauty berry seems to grow well all over the South, if you don't have any you might consider growing some. Mosquitos + SHTF = a very bad day.

I still need to find something that works well on fire ants. I tried the grits trick but it isn't doing the job for me. Maybe I need to import an aardvark. I kinda like aardvarks anyway.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

American beautyberry or Callicarpa americana has been found to be a natural insect repellant. Three chemicals have been isolated that appear to be the active ingredients; callicarpenal, intermedeol, and spathulenol. It has found to be repellant to the mosquitoes which carry yellow fever and malaria, as well as the tick which carries Lyme disease. The discovery and use of callicarpenal has been patented by the United States Department of Agriculture Agriculture Research Service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautyberry

What the heck is this all about? The government has the patent?

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

:D Beauty berry...hmmm...I will look it up and see if I have some growing around here :>)

Fire ants ?

Get yourself a small bottle of peppermint food flavoring from the grocery store and mix 4 tablespoons of peppermint flavoring and 1/2 teaspoon of liquid dish detergent with 16 oz of water in an old spray bottle.

Spray the top and surrounding area of the ant hill with this mixture.

If you spray it...They will leave :>)

Exterminators use this old trick for spraying out commercial buildings and houses that have fire ant problems.

Works pretty well....ants won't come near steps or any perimeter areas that you spray around your house or buildings.

Smells pretty good too...not like insecticide.

Worked for me... :D

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Do you have a problem with legitimate corporations like USDA owning patents?

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Grits work with ants. Just take uncooked grits out to the ants they eat them and it kills them.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

eating a hell of a lot of garlic is natural bug repellent. I speak from experience. vampires, mosquitoes, and other bloosuckers find me most toxic. :D

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

That's not what I referred to is it?

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Garlic is an excellent people repellant too.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

This is good to know.

We have had record rainfall this year, exceeding our annual norm by June. I have had rain for the past month, daily. My yard is considered 'well drained' and I have standing water in some areas. I even lost a rosemary bush due to over watering. You know it is bad when rosemary dies. :shocked_ma:

Anyways, the mosquitoes are crazy right now. My property is mostly pines, some yaupon holly, and a lot of beauty berry bushes. They are native, wild, and abundant.

I'll have try this out. It is good to find that there is a use for those bushes other than their ornamental value.

Here are a couple of pictures. The first one is a large beauty berry under a tree. The second on is a different view of that same bush. (It is under the tree in the background.) The rain is exemplary of what we've had for a solid month. The third picture has yet another beauty berry under the oak by the street. Figured I'd share. They are everywhere here.

(I tried to resize these images. Hope they are small enough and work...)

Blorp

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Lavender essential oil repels mosquitoes.

Pure vanilla extract repels flies (doesn't seem to attract other insects in the process). Read the label, don't use the stuff containing sugar...

How the hell they can call something "Pure Vanilla Extract" and have it contain anything other than vanilla and alcohol is beyond my comprehension. But most now do contain sugar. Our local Big Lots has the non-sugar vanilla for cheap.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Artificial sweeteners are poison for ants.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

They are also poison for people.

fire Ants
 

I've heard pure sugar will kill them too. Dump a bag on their mound and in a few days the nutritional deprivation will kill them.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Avon's OLD


SKIN-SO-SOFT

works for the US Marines.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Great Pics Blorp. Send some to top of the mitt in Michigan. Corn crop is a failure and beans won't make it without a downpour like you showed.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

I managed to score a large number of ripe beautyberries, looks like there's a few seeds in each and apparently this stuff grows fast. The crushed leaves aren't pure dagnasty stank like deet but they do smell suggestive of something that would deter a mosquito. I plan on having beautyberry EVERYWHERE on my property. I don't know if the plant itseld keeps them away but you can never have too much raw material for mosquito repellant!

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

YES - and they aren't legitimate.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Aardvarks are good.

Boric acid powder mixed with sugar should work well to get rid of all kinds of ants and it is deadly to roaches.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Blorp , do you not have gutters?
I'm trying to tell by your images. My brother in law recently replaced all his gutters with some molded plastic thingie that hangs down , catches the runoff and then redistibutes it over like a 12 or 15 foot area next to the base of the house. Anyone know what I'm talking about? He says it allows him to plant (at least S and E) with no irrigation , right next to the house even stuff that would otherwise require watering, and reduces any flooding ( though generally he has no danger of that).
Thanks for the photos , looks lush and inviting!

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

If Callicarpa (beautyberry) ever really catches on I'll try to make some money off it.
We don't grow it right now but I've always considered it one of the prettier Florida natives when it's in fruit.

I'm afraid that fire ants are best controlled chemically.
They're nasty for sure.
Orthene powder, chemically acephate, (not the larger granules) is our best fire ant control.
Sprinkle a smidgen near the mound entrance (without disturbing the residents) and they track it far inside the nest; even to the queen.
Very small chemical use, but very effective.

It works...we get inspected on a regular basis.
I know of no similarly reliable organic control. Wish I did.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

No gutters here. Took them down a few years ago. They end up filling up with pine needles, forcing me to clean them weekly. I just let the rain fall and drain and it is working much better now. If we want to catch water, I place a bucket at the edge of my driveway where you see the waterfall coming off of my roof. Due to the angle of my roof, most water falls right there. The rest of our land is pine trees and yaupon holly. Oh, yeah lets not forget the bumper crop of poison ivy.

Aside from the front garden and our veggies, everything else in our yard is native and requires little to no water other than what nature provides. Our thought is to let stuff grow that wants to grow here. The beauty berries grow like weeds and are ripe right now. I'll snap another picture in a few minutes and post it.

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Here are some pictures of how they are doing this year.

The bush is about 5 1/2 foot tall and about 8 foot wide. Many of my oaks and pines have similarly sized beauty berry bushes beneath them.

The berries are beginning to get like grapes hanging from the bushes.

Blorp

Re: Mosquitos Suck, Found A Proven Herbal Repellent
 

Apparently the berries are edible.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/2657/