Saturday, March 28, 2009

Beauty Berry, a Natural Insect and Tick Repellent


Denese had an interesting blog post with free resources for folk remedies, and one of them caught my eye, Old-Time Mosquito Remedy May Work Against Ticks, Too. Using crushed beauty berry leaves has long been used by Mississippi natives to repel both mosquitoes and ticks.

I buy plants from my local native plants society twice a year, and three years ago I planted a Beauty Berry bush. I will definitely be trying this; we have a lot of ticks and mosquito here in coastal Virginia.

I recently bought some organic citronella oil from Mountain Rose Herbs, so I'll be using this as well. They have dog and cat pet collars using natural herbs as a flea repellent which I'd like to try. Even though we use a monthly treatment on the pets, they still seem to get ticks and fleas. My cat likes to roll in one particular place on our patio, so last year I spread diamateous earth in that area. It's a natural bug killer. It works by dehydrating the exoskeletons of the bugs. It may have helped, but it couldn't have hurt. I'm willing to try something natural this year.

I'll post my results during the summer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I found a small flea comb with metal teeth at W#lmart that gets the fleas very well. It looks like a lice comb with the teeth close together.After I comb through each pass I swish it in a bowl of water with dish liquid to rinse off the fleas. If done regularly it helps keep the flea numbers down.Garlic and brewer's yeast mixed in their food makes the fleas not like their taste.
-kattmaxx

Alexandra said...

Okay, thanks! I'm still researching this problem...we now have ticks. I found our first one today on my daughter. I figure a combination of things will help.