So at our new place..........I've never in my life seen so many mosquitoes. Literally a swarm will come out of nowhere when I pull in after work and in the 30 yard walk between my truck and house, I'll get bitten 4-5 times. Just opening the truck door in the morning to get in on the way to work a half dozen make it into the truck to bite me the whole way into the office. It's so bad right now that my wife/kid won't even go outside. I literally just spent a pile of cash on a killer swing/play set outside and they can't even use it. I've never seen anything like this before. So I started looking today at the cost of having a company come spray our yard on an ongoing basis to eliminate them. I almost puked when the quotes started coming in. Basically I'm seeing that it's $700-$1000 to have it treated for the rest of the summer depending on vendor. One of the companies that responded outlined their process in the quote. Apparently they use ATV's with a sprayer tank and boom on the back to spray the entire yard. That got me to thinking.............. Anyone do their own lawn treatment for this stuff? Anyone know what they use? Is it practical for me to do this on my own with my 15 gallon sprayer and ATV setup for plots? I'm cheap and really don't want to spend a grand on this............
I think you need a permit or be licensed to buy and apply the good stuff. I know a few people who have had it done at their home and everyone has said it works well.
I grew up in FL. Dad used a drip tank of Malathion on the exhaust of our mower. Fogged the whole yard and surrounding brush. Worked great. Don't remember how exactly he had it rigged. My brothers and I used to run through the smoke............that actually explains a lot.
That's weird, do you have a pond in your yard? House in the woods? I'm in the north burbs and we hardly have any skeeters at all. Must be a PITA
That explains it, you guys probably have ticks there too. Not sure which is worse, more people or more blood sucking parasites, hmmmmm?
buy lots of thermacells.... lol. seriously though, it sounds like you might be a prime customer for the mosquito deleto.
I use the Ortho Mosquito control you by at any hardware store. Just figure out what the mixture is for your tank and off you go. It works well for me, I spray my yard twice a year and enjoy a mosquito free yard.
Talstar Pro - active ingredient is bifen. It's good stuff. That's what the professionals use around our swamps. Malathion also works well. Keep in mind, you're not going to irradiate mosquitoes because new ones will just fly back in over time. They'll be gone for a couple weeks but then you'll need to reapply. I'll spray a day before we have a cookout. It works great for that!
I'm in the Pest Control business and we do mosquito spraying. Don't tell anyone, but you can do it yourself. Buy yourself a backpack fogger/mister. I use a Stihl 450. Solo 451 are decent too. Talstar Pro with the active ingredient Bifethrin works well and has a 3- 4 week residual. Check your state regulations as far as treating around water. I know in NY you can't treat within 100 feet of a water source. My alternate product is a biological called Essentria IC3. It can be used around water legally here in NY. (not as long lasting.) There is also a product call mosquito dunks out there for standing water such as ponds, bird baths, etc... You can get your hands on the sprayer for around $800 and a gallon of Talstar is about $50. First year you'll break even. After that you're good to go.
A quick update for anybody that was following this…… So I couldn't find the Talstar pro locally. I ended up finding the Ortho product mentioned above and gave that a shot. Worked pretty good for about a week, but then they were back in full force. I decided to order the 3/4 gallon bottle of Talstar pro off Amazon. I put down 50 ounces of it last night including using the spraying wand to cover the trees the entire perimeter of the yard as high up as I could spray. Will see how long it lasts, but I was able to shoot my bow in the yard last night until dark with no mosquitoes.
