Homemade Roach Killers

Nobody in Florida likes dealing with cockroaches, except maybe for lizards. They’re alarming, bold, creepy, and not the cleanest house guests. They leave bacteria-rich droppings everywhere they go and let mold fester in their dens. They can even spread salmonella bacteria by getting into contaminated food and tracking it into your clean kitchen. Rather than allowing these invaders do what they want in your home, it can be tempting to try out a couple of methods yourself before the infestation gets too severe – here are a couple affordable, easy ways to make homemade roach killers.

1) Simple and Cheap – Get what you pay for

Cockroaches might seem tricky because they evade detection until the last minute, but these pests aren’t the brightest. They’re greedy to a fault. For these homemade roach killers, all it takes to catch them is a swath of duct tape with a dollop of peanut butter in the middle. They’ll smell the fatty nut butter on the air and walk right onto the tape, getting stuck in the process. Fold the tape backward and attach it to the inside of cupboards or along walls for the best results. As the adhesive on duct tape can dry out quickly, these traps will have to be replaced often, and the peanut butter can fall off.

Additionally, roaches caught in the trap can sometimes be eaten by other cockroaches who come to investigate. This trap certainly isn’t as effective as some others. Still, if you’re looking to experiment with cheap home remedies using materials you already have, it doesn’t get any simpler than this.

2) Slice and Dice ’em

If you’ve never heard of diatomaceous earth, you need to get acquainted with it. This stuff is a fine white powder made of the crushed up remains of tiny little sea creatures. Their shells are made of hard silicates, and they are razor sharp. This is especially true of “food grade” DE, which is what you’re looking for if you want to kill roaches. It’s cheap, lightweight, and effective – A pound of it will get you almost a lifetime supply of the stuff for around $2.50 in most places. It’s also remarkably easy to use.

It can irritate your lungs and eyes, so be sure to wear a dust mask and eye shielding just in case you blow it everywhere. To use it, simply sprinkle it where you’ve seen roaches. Well, that’s one way  – But not the most effective. First thing’s first: Clean up. DE needs to be dry in order to kill roaches. Next, get a dry, empty 2-liter soda bottle. Drill or poke holes in the cap and top half of the bottle where it narrows, and fill the bottle halfway with DE. Screw on the lid and squeeze the bottle to spray out a dusting of DE.

Apply a thin layer wherever roaches might be hiding – In cracks, behind bookshelves, the backside of stoves – Anywhere that the cockroaches can be getting at scraps of food. Gaps around wiring and the spaces between walls are all great places to treat with DE. Diatomaceous earth kills roaches by digging into the soft tissues and letting their fluids spill out, killing them via dehydration back in their colony.

3) Send them crying home

For whatever reason, roaches really like chopped onions. The scent seems to scream “food” to them. For these homemade roach killers, you can take advantage of this fact by dicing up some onions and mixing in boric acid. Boric acid is a cheap cleaning agent that can be purchased at most pharmacies. With a bottlecap of juicy diced onions mixed with a pinch of boric acid, you’ve created a trap that lures roaches from all over. They eat the onion and don’t see anything is wrong, even bringing some back home to their nestmates. Soon, they eat the deadly poison, and bubbles form in their brain, killing them and their friends back home.

Though this is a relatively reliable method of dealing with roaches, it won’t handle large infestations on its own, and it can be hard to gauge success within the first couple of weeks. This is a problem that all of these methods share – They do certainly kill roaches, but it can take time to wipe out an entire colony, and heavy infestations may only be dented and soon bounce back when new sets of eggs hatch.

Contact Us

In all cases of severe roach infestations, your best bet is to call professionals – And you can’t do better than contacting the professionals at Total Pest Solutions.