I knew the Citronella plant repelled mosquitoes, and remembering how bad the fleas were when we got here last August and in light of the warm winter I thought I'd look for flea and/or fly repellent plants.
I found what I was looking for and as a bonus,
you can cook with them also!
It turns out lavender, mint and basil have both flea and fly repellent properties. There were also several others, but these are non-toxic to both dogs and cats.
The consensus seemed to be that any variety of these plants would do the trick so we got an assortment.
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| from L to R Greek Columnar Basil, Orange Mint, Peppermint, Apple Mint & Thai Basil |
We set up the porch rail mounted planter box on Sunday and it's now Thursday. I only saw one fly today so it really does seem to be doing the trick.
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| It also doesn't hurt that we have fresh herbs almost within arms reach of the stove. |
It's only been 4 days, but the Thai Basil has flowered and is looking beautiful!
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| A pleasant surprise coming home today and finding little purple flowers on the Thai Basil. |
Next we're going to pull up some of the ivy and try planting mint as a ground cover to help control fleas naturally. We got Peppermint seeds ($2.88 for 300 seeds versus $4.00 for each plant) and this weekend I'm going to get them planted in a starter pack and keep transplanting and starting new ones until we use all the seeds. Jerry & I like working together in the garden so it will be a fun project to try and replace the ivy with mint.
