Protect Your Indoor Plants with No Bugs in Santa Clarita
There are numerous benefits to incorporating plants into your home décor. They help clean the air, reduce dry skin, lower stress, anxiety, and fatigue, and improve focus and performance. Unfortunately, indoor plants create an opportunity for bugs to enter the home, breed in soil, and pester us as we go about our day. You can reduce the chance of indoor plant infestation and protect existing plants by taking precautions and paying attention to warning signs.
One way to protect your plants is to maintain pest control inside and outside your home. The pest control experts at Santa Clarita’s No Bugs Termite and Pest Control, Inc. can help you ward off various household pests and provide year-round outdoor pest control. To learn more about the importance of more organic pest control, read our posts about Pest Control & Health and the importance of Spring Cleaning common hot spots in your Santa Clarita home, such as your closet or garage.
Contact the Santa Clarita pest control specialists at No Bugs to learn how we can protect your Santa Clarita home from household pests and occasional invaders.
4 Preventative Measures: Keeping the Bugs Away from Your Indoor Plants
Prevention of pest infestation in household plants is an important step, as once the bugs are there, it is hard to eliminate them. Whether you purchased a new plant, are propagating existing plants, or repotting older plants, prevention is vital in keeping plants healthy and reducing indoor pests. Prevention takes just a few simple steps before integrating new plants or repotting existing plants.
Use the tips below to help reduce the chance of bugs in your home:
- Look before you buy. Check the soil, the tops and bottoms of the leaves, stems, and flowers of new plants before purchasing them. Evidence of pests that you can see may only be the tip of the iceberg for hundreds of bugs below the surface. Pests thrive in places where plants and soil are plentiful, so greenhouses and nurseries are perfect for bugs to lay eggs and thrive.
- Quarantine new plants for a few weeks to prevent the spread of potential pests. If there are pests that you missed before bringing the plant home, this gives them time to hatch and make themselves known. Keeping new plants segregated helps protect existing plants from infestation.
- Use fresh soil and clean pots when repotting or transferring a new plant to a permanent pot to prevent the transfer of pests from old soil and pots to a new plant.
- Incorporate rosemary and mint into your indoor garden. These herbs are naturally fly, mosquito, and general pest repellants and can help keep the bugs away. Whether planted in pots near your other plants or kept around the house, they will work to repel the pests in your home.
6 Tips for Eradicating Common Household Pests
If your plants already have bugs crawling or flying around them, it is time for some remedial action. Depending on the type of bug plaguing your home, there are different ways to eliminate the infestation and save your plant.
- Soft-bodied bugs can be rinsed from the plant or wiped with a rag or cotton swab.
- Household plant bugs can be killed using insecticide soap, neem oil, or over-the-counter insecticide sprays. You can make insecticide soap with 6 ounces of dish soap, 6 ounces of water, and 2 tbsp. oil; combining in a spray bottle (shake well) and spray onto soil and plant.
- You can remove flying insects using a vacuum hose; just be cautious not to suck up and rip off delicate leaves or flowers.
- Use stick stakes or flypaper strips in your houseplants to capture flying insects that may be buzzing or swarming around your houseplants.
- Remove the top inch of soil and replace it with fresh, dry soil or fine-grain sand to prevent and eliminate soil bugs.
- Reduce the amount and frequency of water to reduce fungus gnats and other fungus-based bugs or bugs that thrive in wetter soil.
Santa Clarita Pest Control Solutions with No Bugs
Although indoor plant pest issues are typically solved with home remedies and adjustments to your plant care, pests outside are a different story. Please feel free to read up on our Mint X+ and the difference between chemical pesticides and alternative options that are more organic. Pest control problems outside can be a big undertaking, so it pays to call in help from professionals with the right experience, equipment, and products to handle them. When you need pest help of all kinds, contact the Santa Clarita pest control professionals at No Bugs Termite and Pest Control, Inc.
Protect the beauty, safety, and integrity of your home. Contact our Santa Clarita pest control team to take back your property today.
