How Do Landscapers Keep Mosquitoes Away?

Most advice about mosquitoes starts with a spray. This post doesn't. White Shovel doesn't spray, and in Alabama nobody should be putting pesticide down on your property for pay without a license from the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries. What a landscaper can do is take away the water mosquitoes need to breed. And in North Alabama, where the ground is red clay and the rain comes down hard, that water is usually a drainage problem.

Every Mosquito Starts in Standing Water

Every mosquito biting you on the patio started life in still water. The female lays her eggs on or just above it, the larvae live in it, and in summer heat they go from egg to biting adult in about 7 to 10 days. No water, no next generation.

It doesn't take much water, either. The Asian tiger mosquito, the black-and-white striped one that bites in the middle of the afternoon, is common across Alabama and breeds in containers: a clogged gutter, a plant saucer, a sagging tarp, a bottle cap's worth of rain. It also doesn't travel far. Most never go more than a few hundred feet from where they hatched. So if they're biting you in the backyard, there's a good chance they were raised within sight of it.

Why North Alabama Yards Hold Water

Madison gets about 56 inches of rain a year, and a lot of it comes in spring and early-summer thunderstorms that drop more water in an hour than the ground can take. Our red clay makes it worse. Compacted clay takes water in slowly, so instead of soaking down, the water runs sideways across the surface until it finds a low spot. Then it sits.

New subdivisions have their own version of this. Lots are graded with heavy equipment, which packs the clay even tighter, and whatever topsoil is left on top fills up fast. Older homes have theirs: downspouts that empty onto a flat bed, a patio that sheds water toward the house, a lawn that has settled over twenty years into shallow dips.

Here's a simple test. After a good rain, walk the yard the next day and again the day after. A puddle that's gone within 24 hours is normal. One that's still there after 48 hours is a breeding site, because a batch of larvae is already on the clock.

What You Can Do Yourself This Week

Most of the water that breeds mosquitoes around a house is in things, not in the ground. Walk the property once a week and deal with it:

• Tip out anything that holds water: buckets, plant saucers, kids' toys, the wheelbarrow, the trash can lid. Store them upside down.
• Change the bird bath water every few days. Once a week is too slow in July.
• Clean the gutters in spring and fall. A clogged gutter can hold water along its whole length, with rotting leaves in it that feed the larvae.
• Pull tarps tight or take them off. A sagging tarp over the grill or the woodpile is a small pond.
• Drill a drain hole in the bottom of recycling bins and anything else that has to stay upright outside.

For water you can't tip out, like a rain barrel or a small ornamental pond without a pump, hardware stores sell mosquito dunks made with Bti, a bacterium that kills the larvae. That's a homeowner product for your own property: read the label and follow it.

When the Water Is in the Ground

Dumping buckets won't fix a low spot in the lawn, or a bed that stays soggy for three days after every storm. That's drainage work, and it's the part of mosquito control a landscaper is actually built for.

• Downspouts. A downspout that empties at the foundation puts a whole roof's worth of water in one spot. Carrying it at least 6 feet out, or piping it underground to where it can spread out and soak in, often dries up the wettest corner of the yard on its own.
• Regrading. Reshaping the ground so it falls away from the house and doesn't cup water in the middle of the lawn. Small dips can be filled; bigger ones need the slope reworked.
• French drains. A gravel trench with a perforated pipe wrapped in fabric, which collects water from a wet area and carries it somewhere it can leave the yard. In clay, where water won't soak down, moving it sideways is often the only way to get rid of it.
• Dry creek beds. A rock-lined channel that carries storm water through a bed or along a property line, and looks like part of the landscape the rest of the time.

Whatever the fix, the water has to go somewhere sensible: a street drain, a swale, a lower part of the property that can take it. Pushing it onto the neighbor's lot solves your problem and starts theirs.

More on these fixes: drainage solutions and standing water.

Where Plants, Mulch and Fans Fit In

Lavender, citronella grass, basil, rosemary and catnip get recommended a lot. Be realistic about them. The oils that repel mosquitoes work when the leaves are crushed; a living plant gives off very little, and a bed of citronella won't keep them off a patio on a July evening. Plant them because you like them, where you'll brush past them.

What matters more is the shade and damp that adult mosquitoes rest in during the day. Keep the grass cut, thin out dense shrubs so air moves through them, and keep mulch at 2 to 3 inches rather than piling it deeper, where it stays wet. And put a fan on the porch. Mosquitoes are weak fliers, and a steady breeze keeps them off you better than any plant.

What Drainage Won't Do

An honest limit: fixing your yard won't stop mosquitoes flying in from somewhere else. If you back onto Aldridge Creek, Indian Creek or a retention pond, or a neighbor's yard is full of containers, you'll still see some. What drainage does is stop your own yard from raising them, and since most mosquitoes don't travel far, that's usually a big part of the problem.

Final Thoughts

Mosquitoes are a water problem before they're a bug problem. Walk the yard once a week and empty what holds water. Watch which puddles last past two days after a storm. And if the same spot is wet every time it rains, fix the drainage instead of fighting what hatches there. Call us at 256-612-4439 for a free estimate.