Last week I discussed the common variety of ticks, how to identify them, and how to remove them when they bite. It is always better to keep the ticks from attaching themselves to you or your pets but most of the store brought repellents are toxic and we don’t always have them when we need them. This recipe for homemade tick repellent has ingredients that are found in most households.
DIY tick and flea repellent
Photo by Kathryn L. Jarvis
Repellent for your pets:
Fill a clean spray bottle with 1 cup of water. Add 2 cups distilled white vinegar. Ticks do not like the taste or smell of vinegar. Now add 2 spoonfuls of vegetable or almond oil. These oils contain sulfur which is a natural tick repellent.
To also repel fleas, add a few spoonfuls of lemon juice, citrus oil, or peppermint oil to the tick mixture. This not only will repel the ticks and fleas but also makes the mixture smell nice.The peppermint and citrus oils give off a strong crisp scent.
Spray the mixture onto the pet’s dry coat, staying away from sensitive areas including eyes, nose, mouth, and genitals. When outdoors for an extended period, spray this solution on two to three times per day.
For you and your family:
You can use the same spray as for your pets, but if you don’t want the oily feeling omit the oil. If you want a solution that smells better you can add 20 drops of your favorite essential oil. Do not use essential oils on your pet. Eucalyptus oil works well and is a calm, soothing scent.
Mix the solution well. Spray onto clothing, skin, and hair before going outdoors and reapply every four hours to keep ticks away. Examine your skin and hair when you get back inside to make sure no ticks are on your body.
Make sure your clearly label the spray bottle so everyone knows what is inside and if it is for you or your pet.
I am outside a lot and hate to spray myself and Shoes with toxic sprays. I already have a bottle of vinegar/water that I use to spray the kitchen counter each evening. I added some lemon juice to it and use it for both the counter and on me when I go outside. I will get another spray bottle when I go to town and mix up the pet formula for Shoes in the meantime I will use the people spray on her, her indoor den, and her bed.
I have been using this for the last three days and have found that it repels ants much better than plain water/vinegar mixture.
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The guys took my truck this morning to the apartment building because they are planning on trimming up a tree located on the property. I ask them to bring home ten more cement blocks for the sun garden which leaves me with more time to work outside today.
First I carried water out to the blueberry plants and then prepared one of the new beds for tomato plants which I plan on purchasing this weekend. I than planted more arugula, spinach, radishes, leaks, kale, and lettuce in the shade garden.
I put off the messy job till last – cleaning the goldfish pond. I lifted the filter and cleaned it and then cleaned some of the winter debris from the bottom of the pond. Weeded the area around the pond and finished by treating the pond water for algae.
Photo by Kathryn L Jarvis
Water looks a bit cloudy and green mainly because I stirred up the bottom by scoping up some of the bottom debris. It should clear up in a few hours especially with a clean filter and the water treatment.
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Today’s challenge is to declutter old and unused cleaning products. This is a hard one to do in just 15 minutes because they are too expensive to throw away. So what I try to do is combine all like liquids into the same bottle and to arrange them so that the full bottles are in the back that way I will use up the smaller amounts first. I don’t have many commercially made cleaning products because I prefer to use homemade solutions but we have to use the stronger products when cleaning the apartment units. I plan on creating an area just for this in the garage when I start redecorating that room.
DIY with Kathy! 