Outsmarting Mosquitoes

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

A better, less expensive choice for a homegrown mosquito repellent may be lemon balm(Melissa officinalis) . Tucker says lemon balm is easy to grow from seeds and contains citronellal, geraniol and geranial.

Although lemon balm oil (called melissa oil) is hard to find commercially, a strain of lemon balm plants with higher essential oil content now is sold by some nurseries. Two mail-order sources are Johnny's [(207) 8613)01; www.johnnyseeds.com ]; and Richters [(905) 640-6677; www.richters.com ]. To use the balm as a repellent, just crush a handful of the delicious-smelling leaves in your hand and rub them on exposed skin.

Tucker's herbal repellent, can be mixed up at home, too. He says his daughter reported success with it, especially against ticks, when she was a ropes instructor at a camp on Chesapeake Bay. She included myrrh.

Another good dooryard repellent plant could be catnip . The American Chemical Society has reported that researchers Chris Peterson and Joel Coats at Iowa State University found nepetalactone, the essential oil in catnip (Nepeta cataria) , to be about 10 times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEFT (N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide) , the widely used synthetic repellent. And James A. Duke, an authority on herbal healing and author of The Green Pharmacy, reports mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) contains enough pulegone, another powerful insect repellent, to make it somewhat effective, too.

(A note of warning: Do not use mountain mint if you are pregnant; the ingredient pulegone has been known to increase the risk of miscarriage.)

Gardeners also report anecdotally that handfuls of basil (Ocimum basilicum) ; lemon thyme (Thymus x citriodorus); lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus), which is citronella's kissing cousin; and various other fragrant herbs crushed and rubbed on the skin often repel mosquitoes for short periods — usually less than 30 minutes. (Always use any herb with caution until you know how your skin will react.)

OTHER STRATEGIES

When it comes to treating your lawn, be careful not to kill the natural enemies of mosquitoes, which definitely occurs when you spray or "bomb" an area with broad-spectrum insecticides. Many of these sprays contain one or more of a group of insecticidal compounds known as pyrethrins. Extremely toxic to bees, fish and other aquatic animals, these chemicals also have been associated with life-threatening allergic reactions in humans, and anemia and disruption of sex hormones in lab animals. They will kill both good and bad insects. Using them is even more disruptive to the natural balance of outdoor life than using electric bug zappers that attract bugs to a light source and then electrocute them. (Numerous studies have confirmed that zappers also kill many beneficial insects and relatively few 'skeeters — unfortunately, less than 2 percent of insects killed by bug zappers are the biting female mosquitoes.)

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print