It’s that time of year again -roach population explosion! Time to break out the eco-friendly roach control. If you live in a climate that is always warm-to-hot roaches can be a constant problem. Where I live in Houston roaches are not a big problem during the winter -we have our few deterrents in place but really don’t worry about it. And then suddenly around April or May there is usually an outbreak that requires us to step things up with regard to roach control. Living in various parts of the South, where it’s very hot and humid (roaches love it here!), I’ve had more than my share of opportunities to experiment with eco-friendly cockroach control. Here are some green roach control tips I’ve found to be most useful. Some I’m sure you’ve heard of before, and some might be nifty new solutions you can implement or combine with your current solutions.

Prevention

You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s worth mentioning as a key element to any roach control plan: keep your kitchen as clean as possible (free of loose food and crumbs. Also fix any leaks and dry any damp areas as well as possible. The goal, naturally, is not to attract roaches by giving them free food and water. It might take a little while to get in the habit of washing and drying plates and or scraping them and putting them in the dishwasher as soon as you’re done eating, but all these little things add up. For my family, besides not leaving dishes stacked in the sink with standing water, daily maintenance amounts to vacuuming the kitchen floor every two or three days and washing counter tops after every use, so it really doesn’t take a lot of time.

“that’s great and everything, but I’ve got a serious roach problem on my hands. I just want them gone”

This happened to me just a few weeks ago. Over a couple of days I noticed a few roaches showing up in the kitchen and thought to myself, “guess I’ll make some roach balls this weekend”. By the time the weekend came around I realized roaches were trying to take over the appliances! In a sudden population explosion there seemed to be scouts sent to check out every corner of the kitchen. This might sound gross, and it is, but even the cleanest homes can have a roach outbreak like this, especially in warm/hot climates. In any case, there are eco-friendly solutions that will work just as well as toxic extermination chemicals.

Even if you’ve got an emergency on your hands, the first place to start is cleaning the kitchen (and wherever else there’s food debris). This will probably mean taking everything out of food pantries and off of countertops.

Dealing with Pet Food

If you can pick up pet food dishes except during feeding times, great. If you’re like me and don’t want to be constantly picking up and putting down food bowls, why not try the ‘moat’ method or isolating your let’s food from roaches. Choose a larger flat container that your cat or dog’s food and water dishes can fit into without touching the edges. There should be about an inch gap. Fill the larger container with soapy water. Roaches will either not try to cross, or will die in the soapy water. If you choose the right size/shape containers this moat solution doesn’t have to take up much more space than your pet’s food area already does.

1. Clean Surfaces and Floor, 2. Wipe with Eucalyptus or Pine Oil

All surfaces (including pantry/cupboard shelves) should be washed with soapy water. While you’re at it, wipe surfaces with eucalyptus, pine or cedar oil (pine cleaner will do in a pinch, but oils last longer). You can mix essential oil (eucalyptus, pine or cedar) with some rubbing alcohol in a  spray bottle.

Do this same routine all around where you’ve seen roaches.

Green Emergency Roach Control

OK, you’ve got two options:

Purchase lizards.
OR
Make natural poison baits.

You can do one or the other, but not both -poisoning geckos is not on the list. If the lizard option doesn’t sound too appealing (I wasn’t sure about it at first either) perhaps hearing about my experiences with house geckos will add some perspective (or skip to natural roach poison baits).

House Geckos- the greenest roach control system

I’ve seen house geckos deployed in a few different homes. The one with the worst roach problem was an older house in south Texas. The little buggers just came in from outside through all the cracks in their house, but trying to seal the cracks on their own and the usual roach solutions weren’t really fixing the situation, so they went online and bought 3 house geckos. Two days later a medium sized box appeared with a bunch of natural fiber stuffing and what appeared to be an empty box. After a few minutes three little (4-inch) lizards zipped out and away from the box. The roaches disappeared over a period of several days and continued to decline until they were just gone. The lizards were only spotted a couple of times, and pretty much kept to themselves.

I had a similar experience to the first one above when I bought some skunk geckos from a local reptile store. These are a tiny bit bigger than house geckos and do the same thing: keep to themselves and eat roaches. Be sure to ask the sales person about care specifics in case they run out of roaches to eat. I’ve heard that if they run out of natural food, they will start wandering out into sight more often, but in my experiences, this has never happened -the South always has roaches… and sometimes geckos will decide they like it better outside. Where I live many people go and buy 3 or 4 geckos for their 2-3 bedroom house every Spring. Anyway, geckos are awesome eco-friendly roach devourers, so consider this as a green option that also gets you out of having to deal with roach baits (and the roach carcasses once the poison kills them -ew).

Natural Roach Poison Baits

The following are 2 types of recipes, one for ‘roach balls’ (poisoned roach baits) and one for a dry mixture (dry roach poison mixture). The roach ball version tends to be more attractive to roaches because of the moisture, but you might have different results, so I’m including the dry recipe too in case that works better for you.

Roach Balls

16 oz. powdered boric acid
1 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
1 sm. onion, chopped
1/2 c. shortening

Combine ingredients, then add small amounts of water until it becomes doughy, but not too wet or it will be difficult to work with. Separate into little balls. You can place these in plastic baggies and put them around the kitchen, including floor, counter top and pantry (and wherever else you’ve seen roaches). If you want to use old containers instead of plastic baggies, that would make it an even greener solution. The baggies tend to keep in some moisture which attracts the roaches, but that’s just me experience. If you’re worried about animals getting into these, you can put the roach balls into old soda cans.

Dry Roach Bait

2 parts cornmeal
1 part sugar
1 part boric acid

Put this mixture into little open containers where you have seen roaches.

What next?

So, the kitchen is cleaned up and wiped with eucalyptus oil. The roach balls are in place, now what? Keep wiping up crumbs and not leaving any food out in the open. Regular maintenance / prevention is key to staying on top of roach control. It will take a few days for the majority of roaches to die, so in the meantime, put some additional deterrents in place. Clean up the roach bodies when they start droppin’ -Follow up with the soapy water, then eucalyptus/cedar/pine oil routine.

Natural Roach Deterrents

Dried bay leaves and catnip work great as roach deterrents. You can place bay leaves directly into your cupboards and pantry, or empty large tea bags and fill with dried herbs, closing them with a bit of string or stapler. There are also iron-sealed tea bags.

Diatomaceous Earth -kills and deters roaches

Diatomaceous Earth (or DE) is comprised of very finely ground fossilized shells of tiny organisms called diatoms. The sharp edges of these tiny particles cut holes in roaches exoskeletons, which kills roaches by dehydration within hours -the same way that borax works. Though this stuff is deadly to roaches, it’s perfectly safe to use around children and pets, and at a price of $3-$7 dollars per pound it’s affordable too. This is technically a poison and not a deterrent, but given that it’s even safer than borax powder, DE is safe to dust all along floors and countertops -even around small children or pet areas. Use something like borax for roach balls to take are of a roach problem, but for sprinkling either borax or DE around in the kitchen I would opt for DE. You can use an old makeup brush or large soft paintbrush to lightly ‘dust’ DE all around under appliances, as well as on floors and countertops. Here are some eBay auctions for DE.

Barrier Protection

Using cedar, pine or eucalyptus oil around the thresholds and windows of your home will deter new roaches from coming inside. Use the same oil and rubbing alcohol spray idea as above, or for outside you can use straight oil. You can also place cedar chips around these areas.

To boost your barrier protection you can place a few concealed soda cans with roach balls squished into them around the edges of your barrier to lure roaches away. Putting roach balls into old soda cans will keep small critters from getting to the poison.

Seal Cracks

Another step you can take is sealing cracks with caulking. If you have very large cracks, canned spray insulation is the quickest way to fill these. Just insert the straw into the crack and push the button until you see foam poking back out. Wipe off excess.

Targeted Roach Control

Use a spray bottle filled with soapy water to spray rogue roaches. They will usually die within a couple of minutes.

That pretty much covers my experiences with green roach control: A combination of prevention through keeping food areas clean, and environmentally-friendly deterrents, as well as ‘green’ poison baits –or just a few hungry geckos– will take care of any roach problem. If you ever decide to go with a professional exterminator, there are green extermination companies who use green pest control products, so ask about the eco-friendliness of a prospective exterminator’s treatments.

If you have some solutions of your own, please share them below…