Mosquito Prevention Checklist for Twin Cities Backyards

Minnesotans joke about the mosquito being the state bird, but here’s the part that’s actually useful: many of the mosquitoes biting you on the patio in July developed in standing water within a short flight of your yard, sometimes your own gutters. That means you have more control than the joke implies.

The five-day rule

A mosquito can go from egg to biting adult in about five days to a week in warm water. Anything that holds water that long is a nursery. After every good rain, walk the yard with that number in mind.

The standing water checklist

• Gutters and downspout elbows clogged with maple seeds and leaves, the number one hidden breeder we find
• Saucers under outdoor planters
• Kids’ toys, sandbox lids, wheelbarrows, and the tarp over the firewood
• Birdbaths (dump and refill twice a week)
• Trash and recycling bin lids that hold an inch of rain
• Rain barrels without screened lids
• Old tires, boat covers, and the folded pool cover behind the garage
• Low spots in the lawn and clogged yard drains
• The tray under the grill and the crease in the trampoline pad

For water you can’t dump, like a rain garden inlet or a pond edge, BTI dunks kill larvae and are safe for pets, birds, fish, and pollinators.

Make the resting habitat less comfortable

Adult mosquitoes spend hot days resting in shaded, humid foliage: dense shrubs, tall grass, ivy, the underside of deck vegetation. Keeping grass cut, thinning dense plantings near the patio, and running a box fan on the deck (mosquitoes are weak fliers) all reduce bites at zero chemical cost.

What professional yard treatment adds

Our seasonal service treats that resting foliage with a residual product on a roughly monthly cycle from May through September, and it makes a dramatic difference in how usable a yard is. Now the honest caveats. First, mosquitoes fly in from elsewhere; a treatment reduces the population using your yard, it doesn’t build a dome over it. Species like the inland floodwater mosquito can travel miles from the marshes that hatch them, which is why the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District works on public wetlands across the seven-county metro. Second, treatments applied carelessly to blooming plants harm pollinators, so we avoid flowering plants and time applications accordingly. Anyone fogging your flower beds mid-bloom at midday is doing it wrong.

Party coming up

A one-time treatment two to three days before a graduation party or backyard wedding is a legitimate, popular option, and it pairs well with having done the standing-water sweep first.

Want your yard back this summer? Ankora’s mosquito service covers the Twin Cities metro, and we’ll walk the property with you free of charge first. Call (651) 556-2666.