Mosquitoes can make a gardener miserable. Worse, they can spread disease. This article will discuss the mosquito life cycle and some easy ways to control them so they do not take over your yard and bird bath.
Mosquitoes lay eggs on still water in singles or in large joined rafts. If the water is turbulent, the mosquito cannot lay the eggs. When the eggs hatch into larvae, called wigglers, they live underwater and feed on plankton and smaller insects. The wigglers have an appendage that projects up into the air so they can breathe. Eventually, the wigglers change into pupae, then become mosquitoes. For the most part, mosquitoes eat nectar, but females must have a blood meal to produce and lay eggs.
The blood meal is generally an animal or bird. If a human is available, he may be bitten. As the mosquito bites, she injects a tiny bit of saliva into the bite to keep the blood from clotting. It is this saliva that can carry any number of diseases, from malaria to West Nile Virus. There are no human vaccinations approved for any mosquito borne illness. Therefore, it is important to prevent mosquito infestations to protect your health as you garden.
Prevention generally focuses on eliminating the larvae of the mosquito. Once the mosquito becomes airborne, it is hard to kill without fogging the area with pesticides, something most of us would like to avoid.
One important part of mosquito control is sanitation. If you keep grain and other food for your pets picked up, you avoid attracting the birds and small mammals that mosquitoes usually feed on. These same critters are the animal vectors for most of the diseases mosquitoes carry. If there is no food for the mosquito, it will go elsewhere.
The second important part of mosquito control is habitat disruption. Make sure you have no standing water that the mosquito can lay eggs in. Old tires, stagnant ponds, and bird baths are frequent nurseries for mosquito larvae. If you must have standing water, wash the container out weekly to keep mosquito larvae from maturing in it.
Another way to keep mosquitoes from your bird baths and ponds is to use mosquito dunks, small compressed pellets of enzymes that are poisonous to mosquitoes but harmless to everything else. Small fish such as mosquito fish or gold fish can be put in water troughs and ponds to eat the mosquito larvae.
Finally, when working outside, avoid working at dusk and dawn when mosquitoes are most active. If this is not practical, wear long sleeved shirts, long pants, and hats that are made of close woven cloth for protection from the bite of the mosquito. DEET is a chemical repellent that is spread on clothes and is proven to protect from mosquitoes for longer than most other chemicals on the market.
Mosquitoes can be a real hazard to gardeners because we are outside so much. Following these suggestions can reduce the amount of mosquitoes in your area and make your time outside much more pleasant.
