When the weather is nice, there is nothing quite as refreshing as taking a meal outdoors. Whether you run a restaurant with garden-side patio space or merely take your homemade dinner out to your deck, you can relax and enjoy the fresh air by dining outside. It’s just you, gorgeous scenery – and dozens of irritating and dangerous pests.
It’s nice to eat outside, but it’s not nice to eat when you are surrounded by hordes of bugs, birds, rodents and other pests. If you want to protect your outdoor dining space and enjoy your meal in peace, read this guide for eliminating pests in your area.
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Keep Everything Immaculate
Nothing attracts creepy-crawlies faster than a food mess. You better believe that food (and food-covered anything) left unattended will be covered with pests in a matter of minutes, so you should be especially focused on cleaning up ASAP.
As soon as everyone is done serving from a dish, that dish should be relocated indoors. The same is true with tableware and flatware that people are finished using. If there are any spills, you should clean them up quickly, replacing linens if necessary. Even the smallest grease speck can bring forth roaches, so you should be sure to scrub the cracks and crevices of your outdoor dining sets, too.
Remove Waste Bins
Trash cans are hardly safe from pests. In fact, critters like racoons and possums know they can find leftover goodies inside your bins, so you need to be diligent about locating your trash away from where you dine outdoors and emptying your trash into dumpsters when the meal is through. Additionally, investing in covered waste bins will reduce the flies and other insects buzzing around your outside space, which makes the experience more pleasant for diners.
Care for Your Lawn
A patchy, dead-looking lawn doesn’t make for good scenery during an outdoor dining event, but more than that, an unloved lawn is a haven for pests. All sorts of creepy-crawlies take up residence in poorly maintained grass, to include flies, moths, mosquitoes and similar exceedingly irksome pests. If you don’t have time (or know-how) to care for your lawn properly, you should invest in professional lawn services, to include lawn pest control. Then, you won’t have to worry about lawn-related pests, and you’ll have something stunning for your guests to look at while they eat.
Drain Standing Water
Mosquitoes can only breed in still water, but in many yards, there is plenty of this to go around. Water can collect in the unlikeliest places, giving mosquitoes the chance to raise a whole new generation of blood-sucking, outdoor-event-ruining pests. Thus, it is well worth your time to search your yard for standing water at least once per month – or more if you live in a particularly rainy area. Things like buckets and pots filled with water should be upended to drain into the soil; if you have a larger pool of water, like a pond, bird bath or ditch, you can treat it with larvicide, add mosquito-eating fish or circulate the water with a cheap bubbler.
Reposition Your Lighting
Bugs that aren’t attracted to your meal might still pester your guests by flocking to your lighting. One solution for this is to invest in sodium-vapor or warm-yellow LED lights, both of which fail to replicate cool-toned UV light, which is what experts believe attracts insects. LED lights in particular draw less energy and function for more than a decade, making them a sound economical investment as well. Another option is to reposition your lighting away from your outdoor dining areas or scheduling your outdoor meals for the daytime, when artificial lights aren’t necessary.
Use Additional Pest Repellants
Just as humans don’t want to dine where there are too many pests, pests don’t like to visit spaces that are abhorrent to them. Thus, you should strive to make your yard unappealing to pests through your landscaping and decorating strategy. First, you can plant fragrant herbs, like basil, lavender, rosemary and marigold. Not only can you use these in your cooking – wowing your guests with your home-grown seasonings – but you will keep away pests that don’t like the smell. The same principle works with scented candles; invest in citronella, lemongrass, eucalyptus and mint to add ambiance to your dinner while keeping pests at bay. Finally, you can install fans to literally blow away pests. Birds and flying bugs don’t like to take flight when winds are high, so fans that disturb the still air will dissuade them from interrupting your meal.
When it’s nice enough to enjoy a meal outside, it is nice enough for pests to begin their plague. However, by preparing against invasion with some of the above strategies, you can dine in style without disruption.
