Ticks are a Tenacious Trouble! (And Chiggers are Criminal!)
“I recently moved into a ground floor apartment that abuts a heavily wooded area, and my neighbors assure me that deer ticks are a serious problem. I have seen deer from my windows, so I know they’re not timid about getting close to people. I am eager to start a vegetable garden, and I think it’s inevitable I’ll need to treat for pests, but I don’t want to harm my houseplants, my feline, or myself. Any thoughts?”
Yes, Maureen. Even with insidious and potentially deadly and disabling pests like ticks, {quote} “treating” (which I assume means spraying) is never the answer. Nor is it the answer for chiggers, nasty little arachnids that borrow into your skin, and are especially active in the South and Midwest. Thankfully, they don’t take blood meals or transmit disease like ticks-- but everyone who have been chiggered reports that the itching is intolerable. If chiggers you suspect (and you’ll know it) get into a warm bath with baking soda right away! Or even better, dust sulfur powder into and onto your socks to repel them.
Chiggers lurk in little ‘islands’ of damp brush and tall grass, so one method of prevention is to cut all unnecessary brush to the ground, which will also help greatly with ticks. Both pests greatly prefer habitats of tall damp brush. Removing the brush removes their habitat. (Despite what some {ahem} ‘exterminators’ may tell you, neither ticks or chiggers will frequent well-cut lawns that are allowed to dry out between waterings.)
Chiggers and ticks attach themselves to you when you walk through damp, brushy areas, like your nearby woods or a meadow. And that’s when you should be wearing arachnid-killing clothing.
Some of you may have heard the phone call a couple of weeks ago where a listener expressed concern about possible negative effects on the environment, as the clothing is treated with permethrin, a synthetic form of pyrethrum, one of the oldest ‘botanical insecticides’, derived from the flowers of the pyrethrin daisy, a type of chrysanthemum. (Yes, I said it was the leaves of the plant during that phone call. There is an easy explanation for this—I am a dyslexic dummy.)
Why use a synthetic form of a natural flower? Because the synthetic form resists degradation from sun, rain and other elements for four to six weeks, as opposed to a day or two for the crushed flowers. The pre-treated permethrin clothing I wear is guaranteed for 100 washes. There’s even a little checkbox inside the waist band you can use to keep track.
No, I do NOT like using any kind of synthetic insecticide, but as I said during that phone call, I know too many people whose lives have been devastated by Lyme disease; and one of my dearest friends, Marty Singleton, died from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever as the direct result of a tick bite, so I choose what my good friend Dr. Bill Quarles of the Bio-Integral Resource Center calls “Common Sense Pest Control”. The permethrin is very low dose (one-half of one percent), you don’t spread it on your skin, it doesn’t enter the environment, and is remarkably effective.
A company called “Insect Shield” was one of the first to sell professionally permethrin-treated clothing; as well as products (sprays and pumps) to self-treat your clothing. These sprays are widely available under a number of brand names in places that sell hunting and fishing supplies. (Just don’t use anything that also contains the toxic repellant DEET.) Or you can send your own clothes to Insect Shield or a similar company for professional treatment.)
We move on to “Tick Tubes”; small cardboard tubes stuffed with cotton balls that have been treated with a higher concentration of Permethrin (9%). Despite the common name ‘deer tick’, many of the ticks that carry Lyme and other diseases have never seen a deer; but they have all spent time feeding on the white footed field mouse. That makes mouse control essential to keeping ticks out of your landscape, a task that is close to impossible.
Enter the tubes. As anyone who has ever left an open box of tissues in an attic or basement knows, mice love to collect soft stuff to line their nests. If they find a cotton ball in your yard, you can be sure they’ll carry it home and the Permethrin will kill any ticks on that mouse, as well as on the mouse’s family and any neighbor mice that come in for a visit. And it doesn’t harm the mice; just ticks; and it kills those ticks at the most significant and dangerous stage in their development.
EPA approved, the tubes were only available in 33 states when I last wrote about them (2019), but I couldn’t find any restrictions this time out. (In addition to the feds, each state must approve pest control products.) Two brand names seem to be available: Damminex (the original) and Thermacell.
Now a warning: Many DIY sites show how to make your own tubes. But in doing so you have to handle a pesticide and risk getting this concentrated 9% form into yourself and the environment. Unless you’re a Certified Pesticide Applicator (yes, that’s a real thing), please do NOT attempt to ‘do it yourself’.
We’ll post a link to the EPA’s exceptional website about Permethrin with the written version of this article at the Gardens Alive section of the Gurney’s website. https://www.epa.gov/insect-repellents/repellent-treated-clothing
