Keep your yard flea free with locally purchased items.
Flea battles take place on three fronts: your home, your pets and your yard. A number of simple flea treatments are available locally at your home improvement store and garden supply store. Knowing a list of locally available flea repellents helps you decide the best treatment for your yard.
Fleabane
Fleabane looks similar to ox-eye daisies. This plant emits an odor known to repel fleas from your property. Fleabane has many daisy-like flower heads. The plant requires moist soil and needs partial to full sunlight. Although the growing plant repels fleas, pluck branches and flowers, too, and place them in doghouses and around the garden to repel fleas.
Nematodes
These small worms will not destroy every flea in your yard, but they limit the numbers that survive by feeding on them. Nematodes are available at pet stores and garden supply stores. They feed on the larvae of fleas. Nematodes are most effective in damp soil with some sand mixed in, but are effective in other soil types as well. During colder winter months, nematodes become inactive, requiring a second treatment in the spring. The worms are perfectly safe around pets and children.
Cedar Chips
Cedar chips repel fleas because of their fragrance. Adding cedar chips to the mulch in your flowerbed discourages them from living there. Either mix the chips in with your standard mulch or purchase cedar mulch. Another idea is to sprinkle cedar chips around your yard before you mow. Then mow your lawn as usual. When you mow, the mower's blades chop the chips into small pieces and send the small pieces around the yard. Reapply cedar chips every one to two months or after heavy rains.
Diatomaceous Earth
Diatomaceous earth is a powder made from grinding the fossils of microscopic sea organisms. When the fleas come in contact with the powder, the sharp edges of the powder cut through the outer skeleton of the fleas. This leads to dehydration and eventual death of the fleas. Diatomaceous earth is available at home improvement stores, pet stores and garden supply stores. For the safety of your family and pets, use the food grade version of the powder and not the pool version.
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