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wasps garden

How To Keep Wasps Away from Your Garden

Summers are full of outdoors, be those barbeques, short evening tea times, cocktail parties, or lazy afternoons when you just want to soak in some Vitamin C. However, all of these and many other fun summer plans are often destroyed by those annoying wasps buzzing around and having an unsolicited share in everything. It may seem impossible to keep these wasps at bay entirely. However, some tips can still come in handy to keep their interference as minimum as possible. Wasps are important to the ecosystem; they hunt on many harmful insects and pollinate plants. It is therefore not advisable to kill them but to minimize their interference. Here are some useful tips on how you can prevent your garden from becoming a wasp magnet during summers.

Why do wasps hang around gardens?

Before we reach out for solutions, let's first understand the problem. Why do wasps even hover around gardens? It can be for either of the following reasons.

  • They have a nest in your garden.
  • They smell food in there.
  • They are finding water in your yard.
If you eliminate the foregoing factors, you'd eliminate more than 90% chances of them being found in your garden. So, if you don't spot on any nests they may have in your garden, move towards the following.

Water


Like all others, wasps are also drawn to water. They would either want to sip from it or have a pool party therein. This can be prevented in two ways.
  1. Don't let rainwater gather in your garden. Ensure having an efficient drainage system or employ manual ways to remove any pooled rainwater.
  2. Optimize your irrigation system by fixing the direction of water being sprinkled. Prevent it from wetting the grass and pavement.

Insects

Another major reason why you'd find wasps hovering around your garden all time, even when no flowers are blooming, is insects. Insects are a vital part of every garden (no matter how effective natural chemical pesticides you use). Wasps feast on many kinds of insects such as ants, caterpillars, plant lice/aphids, beetles, and flies. If you eliminate insects from your garden, you'd automatically get rid of wasps. Although it is not possible to entirely get rid of insects but using pesticides can eliminate most of them.

Flowers

Wasps are attracted to flowers because of their color, nectar, and fragrance – nothing of which really sounds alien. They would always hover around a flowering garden; however, the following flowers are not on the top of the wasps' favorite flower list.
  • Marigolds (don't have a pleasant smell)
  • Flowers that are not efficient nectar producers such as Geraniums
  • Red flowers (sharp-colored flowers are repelled by insects)
  • Double-flowered plants such as roses (Hard for wasps to get in there)
  • Flowers that do not coincide with the wasp season
  • Evening flowers such as Evening Primrose and the Jasmine
To avoid wasps from flying into your house, do not plant flowers close to the house, particularly those that wasps love.

Food

Leaving food unattended in the yard is like an open invitation to all the wasps of your region for a party in your yard – and they never miss any of such events. Do not leave any food (not even food particles) or pet food out in the yard. Thoroughly clean the sitting table after you are done and ensure they are no liquids or food scraps left-back. Seal close the bin bags of your garden and make sure to change them regularly. In addition to these, you can also use natural pesticides to get rid of wasps in your garden but make sure they won't harm other beneficial insects of the garden.
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