I have to be honest, back in April (?), when an extended family of herons moved into the tree in front of our house, and I did some research on these somewhat scary looking birds - who it seem are never leaving - one of the fun facts I found was that they EAT MOSQUITOES. Eat mosquitoes! Finally! I have been waiting forever for someone to eat the mosquitoes in this neighborhood, so I am somewhat confused as to why the herons are slacking on the job-front.
Needless to say, the mosquitoes are still everywhere.
Enter Google. Unwilling to spray my backyard with pesticides, I have been looking for something more natural, and I came across a really weird recipe that combines dollar store blue mouthwash, epsom salt and cheapo beer. We already had the epsom salts because we're a little crunchy like that, but the blue mouthwash and beer eluded us. But after a trip to the local - how shall I say this - less classy part of town (which, don't kid yourself, is like four minutes away), Josh was the new (proud?) owner of blue mouthwash and beer in huge 36 ounce cans, because more beer is obviously always better.
Mix it all up, shake it so the salts dissolve, and spray it all over the yard.
You guys, this stuff works - but you need a A LOT of it. And we are blessed with a fairly large yard for our neighborhood - it goes at least 100 feet back. What we are not blessed with is a very good sprayer for this project, and so we haven't been spraying it nearly all over the place. I can't say how long it lasts, and it's possible that we need to spray the backyard every few days, but that might also be because we aren't using enough on each go-round.
Also, let's be clear that whenever I say we here, I totally mean Josh.
I literally have nothing to do with this, aside from being the googler of anti-mosquito DIY recipes, and the person responsible for taking pictures of weird things, like empty beer cans - which I totally forgot to do.
But this stuff does work. We just might need to invest in an extra large sprayer. And some more beer.
:)
jen