Mitch Baker: Hi! I am Mitch Baker with American Plant and we are talking about great gardening tips for July. Now let's talk about controlling those pesky mosquitoes. Since the introduction of the Asian tiger mosquito in 1985, it's really changed the way we garden or at least the way we spend time in our garden. So we are looking ways to control mosquitoes in our gardens. And we have a couple of choices. We can control mosquito larvae and we can control mosquito adults.

Any where there is a stand of water, it could be something as large as a pond, it could be a bird bath, it could be gutters on the house, drainage pipes any where there is standing water, that's a breeding area for mosquito larvae. So we can use mosquito dunks or mosquito bits which are a concentrated form of a naturally occurring soil bacteria BT or Bacillus Thuringiensis, applied to the water. This targets mosquito larvae only. It's harmless to all other forms of life. So you can use it in a fish pond. You can use it in a bird bath. But we ought to be changing the water in a bird bath frequently, so that we don't have to use some thing like a mosquito dunks. But they are available very affective in controlling mosquito larvae. Now mosquito adults, usually we use the yard sprays or the foggers. This type of yard spray is really easy to use because it comes in its own applicator. You just hook it up to your hose. You don't have to mix it or measure it. And then you can spray this around the shrubbery or around the deck in the patio where mosquitoes tend to hang out. And this repels them for several hours, even a couple of days if weather conditions are right. And remember this is just a repellant. It doesn't kill anything it just keeps the mosquitoes at bay.

We also have personal repellants that we can use. In 2005 the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta started recommending the oil of lemon eucalyptus as a personal repellant. And you have to reapply this during the day to keep the mosquitoes at bay. But it's deep free and very affective for that length of time. Remember the more mosquitoes you have in your garden the less time you are going to spend in your garden. But if you follow a few preventive tips, you'll have your garden mosquito free in no time. Next we'll talk about watering your house plants while away on vacation.