Large scale pesticide/insecticide?

[EddieWalker]

I've tried spraying, but I was never consistent with it, so it was a waste of money. We put up traps, but even though they fill up, we never noticed any sort of a decline in the bugs around the house. We bought bug zappers, and put three of them around our porch with fair results. It's satisfying seeing them get zapped, but they probably draw in more bugs then they kill, and another waste of money.

Thermocell is our latest method to enjoy our deck without the bugs, and it's the only thing that actually works. We have two of them, but just putting one down on the table between my wife and I is all we really need. She uses the second one when we have her kids over to grill. She also hangs it from her hip when she is out in the garden.

Something else that might be helping with the bugs is mowing. Two years ago, I bought a cabbed tractor and a 12 foot batwing. Since then, I've been able to mow my entire place three times a year. The weeds are disappearing, and after it rains, the puddles are drying out faster. The number of snakes that we are seeing has also declined dramatically!!!!

 

[duffer]

I spray my 5 acres with Bifen-IT twice a year. Kills army worms, ants, grubs, moth larvae and essentially anything living in the soil. (No cicadas yet either). And by keeping all the insects out of the soil, it takes away the food supply for varmints, like armadillos.

Not sure its effect on gnats, but I don't have a ton. And I do keep my acreage mowed regularly, as per another poster.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I have about 20 acres of grass pasture around my new house I’m building in Virginia. It is just eat up with little flying gnat/fly type bugs. In the summer it’s almost unbearable to stand outside on the farm.

Any large scale insecticide I can apply with a sprayer that would help knock that bug population down some?

Humming bird food. I have flickers and woodpeckers working the snags along the creek, so have hundreds of humming bird condos. When the little ones start flying, the gnats vanish. They are hungry little bug snipers.

 

[jaxs]

Before taking this course,I strongly belive you should trap several and have them identified. When you know what the bug is you will know what is attracting.harboring or otherwise causing the unusually high population. Eliminating/mowing a specific plant or draining standing water might be all it takes. Instead of spraying entire place,if you know where they breed spraying 10% as much insecticide in the key place could give same or better results and spare millions of non-targets.

The problem with large scale spraying is it kills more non-targets than pests and things go down hill from there.