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castorp

Home pest control and the garden

castorp
20 years ago

I've recently begun trying to garden as organically as possible, but we still have a pest control service. Every six months a man douses the outside of the house and the land right around the house with a pesticide. I know this can't be good. Last time the poison killed some goldrim catepillars on the pipevine. We would like to cancel the pest control service, but we do not want pests inside the house. We're especially concerned with roaches. We can tolerate a few stray ants, a spider sneaking in, but we'd really like to keep the house 99.98% roach free. Is this possible without a regular pest control service? Is it possible with little or no pesticides?

We keep everything clean and neat, take out the garbage every day, and follow the other guidelines on avoiding bug problems. We do have beds with woodchip mulch along the back of the house, and we've heard that this could attract roaches. We don't know if it's true.

We live in Florida. The roaches can be aggressive here.

If anyone has any advice, experiences to share, or books to recommend on this subject, we'd greatly appreciate it.

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