If you’re local to Peachtree City, Georgia, the phrase “Life In The Bubble” serves to unify us as we live in a unique community, connected by our web of cart paths, but what started as a small town with a unique transportation system has morphed and expanded with time to include all sorts of people and all kinds of homes. We’ve got older homes, newer homes, big landscapes, small landscapes, and just about everything in between.
What you end up with are unique, individualized pest control challenges, specific to each client and their home. While it may seem overwhelming to wonder what can be done about cockroaches in each of these different scenarios, the answer is simple: Integrated Pest Management.
What Is Integrated Pest Management?
Integrated Pest Management is a common theme in so many of our blogs. That’s because it plays a pivotal role in maximizing the value of any program, especially pest control. It’s what tailors pest control to your home. To put it simply, Integrated Pest Management is the use of all available methods to prevent or control a population of pests. While this includes the use of pest control products, it is not limited to them.
The homeowner plays a major role in the control of pests in and around the home. While partnering with Nature’s Turf or a trusted pest control partner in your area is key to success, the cultural practices you use could be the difference between good pest control and great pest control. Before we get to specific scenarios, let’s review practices that are good for all clients and homes.
What Are Good IPM Strategies for Roaches for All Homes?
Just like there are tried and true pest control products and treatment strategies for all homes, there are also important practices for controlling cockroaches of all species in all homes. The keys are cleanliness, and sealing the home to make it difficult for them to enter.
Cleanliness is the foundation of good pest control for all pests and properties. When conditions outside the home become less than favorable for cockroaches, your home looks like an oasis, and any sort of free food or moisture makes it feel like paradise. Taking out your trash, maintaining a high standard of cleanliness, and storing your food in sealed containers are key to limiting the success of these unwanted guests, but what about keeping them out to begin with?
This can be a challenge, but one worth the effort. Pest control products are used to form an invisible barrier around the home, but it’s equally important to make sure that any small void they can use to gain access is closed to ensure they stay out. Sealing doors, windows, siding gaps, or cracks works in combination with pest control products to keep the pests outside. IPM doesn’t stop at the structure though.
New Homes With New Landscapes?
New homes with new landscapes are an interesting proposition. A fresh start or clean slate in some ways. They certainly aren’t without their pest problems, however. During much of the construction process, they are wide open to the world around them and can provide shelter for surrounding pests. Once complete, they’re landscaped with materials brought in from other places and then filled with furnishings that also came from other places.
If you sit back, that’s an awful lot to consider, but a lot of these challenges are managed with a few easy IPM strategies. First and foremost, get a trusted pest control partner. The time to get pest control isn’t after a pest population has gotten out of hand, but starting early to prevent one from happening.
While it is impossible to move in with the doors closed, keeping the doors closed and ensuring that all of the fitment for windows, doors, and screens remains good as a new home settles reduces opportunities for them to move in. Making sure that furniture doesn’t have any tagalongs before coming inside, and getting rid of the moving boxes ASAP is also important. Cardboard clutter can be a great place for cockroaches to find harborage as well as sustenance and moisture.
If you encounter a cockroach problem after moving in, never fear. Your pest control company should be able to treat the problem with products labeled for use inside the structure and safe for its occupants.
How About An Older Home With An Older Landscape?
If you’re just moving into this home, all of the rules outlined above apply to moving into an older home as well, but there could be some other challenges unique to a structure that has existed for a while. A mature landscape with older trees around it, for instance.
You’re most likely to find American Cockroaches in most scenarios, but mature landscapes with rotting trees may also invite secondary species like Smokybrown. They, too, enjoy the low traffic areas of homes like crawl spaces, basements, and attics, but can happily occupy an older tree.
Older landscapes often have other features that seem welcoming to cockroaches. Debris and moisture accumulation in gutters, for example. Not only is that appealing, but could also lead to structural issues or gaps beneath which are a welcomed entry point for them to find their ways inside. Debris piles can be appealing to cockroaches too since they generally feed on detritus when in the landscape. This could also include an accumulation of mulch or other ground cover in the landscape near the home.
Much like the goal inside should be cleanliness, this is also the goal outside. Reduced clutter and maintaining a clean home and landscape reduces the places roaches can harbor or receive sustenance. If your home isn’t appealing outside, the hope is that it lowers the chances they make it inside. Stacking the odds with a barrier of effective pest control products is also advised. High pressure situations can sometimes mean breakthroughs between scheduled services. If that happens, Nature’s Turf is happy to provide an additional service to make sure that barrier is maintained.
What About The Homes That Are Somewhere In Between?
Most of us live in some kind of reality between a brand new home, and an older home. Maybe we’ve lived in the same place for a lot of years, and while the house isn’t old, it’s not quite new anymore either. That’s when we fall back on the core principles of Integrated Pest Management, and tailor them to fit the needs of our own homes and situations.
Let’s use my house as an example. I have small children and pets. The war on crumbs is never-ending. Every time I turn around, there is something new to clean up. We could vacuum the entire house every day, and there would probably still be something we missed. That said, we make the effort to make sure that the critters in the large/old trees and woods around my home don’t find easy food if they make their way inside. We also regularly clean our gutters, and make a concerted effort to reduce clutter outside.
Like many people, I’ve got a room full of boxes, and even more empty ones in the attic that I hold onto for no logical reason, despite having no intention to move and having done nothing with their contents in the 8 years I’ve lived there. While our program does a terrific job of keeping pest pressure in my home low, by playing an active role in eliminating harborage points and food sources, I’m doing my part to achieve the results I desire. I also know that I have a couple of projects to get to!
So What Do I Do Now?
Whether you live in a brand new house with a young landscape, an older house with big, old trees around it, a home with close neighbors, or so far away that you can’t see the person next door, cockroaches are lurking. Customizing a pest control plan for your house is easy. All it takes is a little communication and some teamwork.
The most important takeaway from this blog is understanding that a service like Nature’s Turf, utilizing pest control products to establish barriers, and the selective use of others to eradicate pests work best when combined with great cultural practices by the client. Together, we can achieve the results you desire!
