Summer is a time for beach fun, stone fruit, and, unfortunately, mosquitoes. One homeowner on Instagram shared an incredible hack for getting rid of mosquitoes in your yard.
The scoop
Verona Environmental (@vec_veronanj) is a volunteer environmental commission for Verona, New Jersey. They share tips, tricks, and events for the area geared toward ecological awareness. In one of their videos on Instagram, they taught followers about Mosquito Dunks.
The clip starts with the creator telling viewers to get rid of any standing water in their yard. Next, fill a bucket with water and throw in some leaves or grass clippings. Leave this bucket for the annoying pests to lay their eggs in for a few days. If you want to check, you will see some larvae swimming around, but we understand if you want to skip that step.
Once your bucket has been out for a few days, add "a quarter of a Mosquito Dunk." This murky bucket mimics the breeding habitat of most mosquitoes. The Dunk will kill the larvae and hopefully reduce the mosquito population in your yard. As the video says: "This is a much better way, rather than using horrible, horrible yard sprays."
How it's helping
Mosquito Dunks are an interesting product that works by releasing a larvicide into the standing water in your bucket. According to Summit, the company that makes the Dunks, "this bacteria is ingested by the mosquito larvae within the water and soon after kills the mosquito larvae with no effect on anything else."
This is a cheap and safe way to protect your yard from mosquitoes. A pack of six Dunks costs less than $10, and since you only need a small piece per treatment, they should last you the whole summer if not several summers.
Using a product like this also helps you avoid toxic yard sprays. The most common category of pesticide used in mosquito treatments is pyrethrins. The National Wildlife Federation writes that these toxins are non-specific: "There is no way for companies to spray these broad-spectrum insecticides in your yard without also killing other insects they come in contact with, including bees, butterflies, caterpillars, ladybugs, dragonflies, and other beneficial insects, along with the mosquitoes."
Not only are these pesticides toxic to many types of insects, but they can also harm children, and the runoff can kill fish and poison waterways. Why use harmful pesticides when you can have a mosquito-free summer in a cheap and non-toxic way?
What people are saying
Commenters were grateful for the hack and had some suggestions to add.
"Mosquitos are one of the few insects that the world would legitimately be a better place if they went extinct," one user said.
Another said: "Mosquitoes are so bad where I live."
"They also make this product in granules that can be sprinkled into puddles and other standing water or in the wet grass where mosquitos also breed," one person commented.
"If it's something hard to flip over you can put a gold fish or feeder fish in it and they will eat the mosquito larvae I've had rain barrels with the same fish in them for years," another suggested.
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