Mosquitoes are drawn to yards with standing water for breeding and shaded, humid vegetation for resting.
When you know what’s pulling mosquitoes into your yard, you can do more to keep them out. The first step is to make your yard less appealing in the first place.
Standing water is easily the biggest draw for mosquitoes. It’s where mosquitoes breed. Any water that sits for a few days will do. Mosquitoes can breed in clogged gutters, plant saucers, buckets, low spots, birdbaths, tarps, and irrigation runoff. A yard with more standing water, plain and simple, will produce and hold more mosquitoes.
Shade and dense vegetation are the second factor. Adult mosquitoes dry out in the hot sun. They need humid, shaded spots to survive. If you deny them those places by mowing your lawn and trimming dense vegetation, you’ll have fewer mosquitoes around.
Then there’s you. Mosquitoes locate hosts by the carbon dioxide you exhale, your body heat, and the compounds in sweat and on your skin, which is why they home in on people. Dark clothing makes you easier to spot, as does being active and sweaty. To a large extent, there’s not much you can do about this, but you can at least consider using repellents with DEET or picaridin if the mosquitoes seem to take to you in particular.
You can't change your body chemistry, but you can remove standing water, thin dense vegetation, improve drainage, and be mindful of overwatering. This is enough to seriously put a damper on the mosquito population.
If you're tired of your yard drawing mosquitoes like a magnet, Mosquito Squad of East Denver can help. Mosquito Squad treats the resting zones and helps you cut the breeding sources that attract them. This can help you protect your yard with up to 90% reduction in mosquito activity on a recurring 21-day cycle.
