Friday, January 3, 2014

How to Keep Cockroaches Out of the House

How to Keep Cockroaches Out of the House
Keeping cockroaches out of the house requires and integrated approach to pest management. The first and most important thing you need to do is get rid of all food sources.
Cockroaches will eat just about anything.  If you have crumbs of food hiding somewhere they will find them so you need to do a thorough job cleaning. If there is nothing for the roaches to eat, they won’t come in.

Clean under cabinets, inside drawers and cabinets, in the pantry under the stove and refrigerator and anywhere else that food or debris may be hiding.
The next thing you need to do is make your home a fortress. Make sure there are no cracks or crevices where roaches can enter. If you are sealed up, they cannot come in. You can do this with caulking, expandable foam and weather stripping.
The types of roaches that you will usually find coming in from the outside are the big ones, often incorrectly referred to as palmetto bugs in Florida. These are American roaches, Asian roaches and brown roaches.
German roaches are smaller and come into your house in other ways.  German roaches will typically make their way in through bags and boxes of groceries, fruits and vegetables. If you go to a farmers market or you will want to make sure you thoroughly check all bags and boxes before you bring them into your home.
The next thing you need to do is to treat the outside of your home. Kill them before they have a chance to get in. Roaches like to eat wood and will often live under wet piles of mulch, so cleaning them up is a good preventative.
If you have lots of decorative mulch that you don’t want to get rid of, treat the outside of your home with a safe pesticide. Pyrethrums are very effective and are also quite safe. While this is a synthetic pesticide, it is made from Chrysanthemums and is therefore biodegradable and safe for the earth.
When it comes to roaches, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of pesticide. Follow these tips and you won’t have problems with those nasty critters in your home.

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