With mosquitoes, gnats and other biting insects also active, you may need to do a simple test to see if you have fleas inside of your home.
Keep fleas out of the yard too!
This video will show you how to test for fleas AND how to treat them. It’s a process and it’s not something that can be accomplished without several treatments.
Flea Treatment
While it’s important to treat the grassy areas of the lawn, Peninsular also focuses on any shady areas where the pets rest during the day. In the house, it’s the same principle… concentrate on the areas that are most used by the pet. One way to determine if fleas are active in a particular area is to place a white cloth on the floor in that area. Fleas are attracted to white, and they will appear on the cloth. This would obviously be an area we would treat.
We treat the areas of the lawn where the pet rests during the day.
Once the home is treated, you need to treat your yard as well. Immediately after treatment, pets and people need to stay out of the area until the product is dry. Insect growth regulators can be added to the treatment, eliminating the need for any follow up applications. The yard will need a second treatment though, two weeks after the initial one. This will help break the life cycle of the fleas.
So enjoy your summer on Jacksonville’s First Coast! No matter how hot our weather is, your pet will still want to go outside. Following these few simple suggestions should control any flea problems that might occur.
About Peninsular
Peninsular Pest Control is a Jacksonville Pest Control Company that offers a full range of residential and commercial services including pest control, lawn maintenance (fertilization and weed control) as well as termite treatment (Termidor® and Sentricon®).
Get the Best Exterminator in Jacksonville & St. Augustine
When it comes to Small Ant Treatment and Pest Control, we deal with two different types of ants, large ants and small ants. Both ants follow pheromone trails. These trails are where bait is placed so the ants take that bait back to their colony, destroying the rest of the colony.
Locating the nest of the ghost ant is important.
Small ant treatment in the lawn is usually done with a granular treatment product. This is the best Ant Pest Control for small ants because they will carry the product back to their colony to share with other ants which will eventually destroy the entire colony. Homeowners in St. Augustine, FL often see small, translucent ants in their kitchens. These are called ghost ants.
Ghost Ants
Ghost Ants got their name from the fact that they are often hard to see. Ghost Ant are transluscent and extremely small and can appear anywhere in the home but, generally in the kitchen. Treatment utilizes bait stations but, it’s very important to find the source of the infestation. The Peninsular Pest Control technician will follow the trail of the small ant until eventually discovering the nest. They could be coming in through a crack in a windows sill or even in a plant that is located inside and sometimes outside of the home.
Small ant treatment in Jacksonville FL
The ghost ant is very adaptable in its nesting habits. They can easily nest outdoors or indoors. Colonies can be moderate to large in size and contain numerous breeding females.
Sites include clumps of dead, but temporarily wet, grass, plant stems, and cavities under debris in rapidly changing open habitats. Inside, the ant colonize in the void of a wall or the spaces between cabinets and baseboards. Therefore, the colonies divide into subunits that occupy different nesting sites and swap individuals back and forth along the olfactory trails. Ghost ants opportunistically nest in places that sometimes remain habitable for only a few days or weeks.
If you are in need of small ant treatment, call for a free estimate today and enjoy the rest of your summer!
When your pet goes out to play in the yard, when they play with other animals or we just simply take them for a walk …they can pick up fleas and bring them inside the home. For this reason, flea treatment is critical.
Fleas Treatment in Jacksonville FL
Also, if you have squirrels or rodents in the attic or if stray animals have access to your yard or under you house and they can actually come in on you clothing, like the cuff of your pants.
How does a flea infestation happen so quickly?
The infestation doesn’t actually happened that quickly, it takes about two weeks for the life cycle of a flea to be completed. A flea has to pass from the EGG stage, to the LARVAE and then to the PUPAE before it becomes an ADULT. We really never notice the fleas until they’re in the adult stage. This is when they bite and the cycle begins again because the female flea needs to take a blood meal like the mosquito before she lays her eggs. Here’s something most people don’t realize is the adult flea represents only 5% of the life cycle of a flea, so 90% of their cycle will probably go unnoticed to you or the pet. The eggs are 50% of the cycle so you really want to try to prevent the eggs from hatching.
How do I keep the eggs from hatching?
The best treatment is prevention. Flea treatments in Jacksonville FL will break the life cycle of the flea so they never mature into adults and this is actually the best way to treat fleas if you do have a pet in your home.
Test your home for Fleas
Although PREVENTION is the best way to control fleas, there are people who already have an infestation… what do they do? First do a simple test to see if you have fleas inside your home. Take a white cloth lay it down in the area of the rug that your pet normally frequents and since fleas are attracted to white they will instantly appear on the white cloth within 30 seconds. If fleas appear you have now gone from preventative stage to curative stage.
How does Peninsular treat fleas?
At this point it becomes a curative issue that we have to treat the inside of your home, the lawn and we make sure to focus on the areas of the lawn where the pet likes to reside and then the pet owner will need to make sure the pet is treated for the adult fleas and then put their pet on a subsequent prevention program. Peninsular will come by and make sure that that’s the problem you’re having is a flea issue.
You can find more information on our YouTube channel which if full of informative videos about fleas and other pest problems you might be having in your home. Remember there is absolutely no charge for us to come out and give you an estimate.
Have you just moved into a newly built home and your grass is not looking as good as it should? There is a reason.
New subdivisions are often created on top of existing sandy soil. If no topsoil is added to the ground before the sod is installed, the grass will not thrive. We all know grass needs nutrients to grow …but a healthy soil profile containing rich, organic matter is equally important. Just adding fertilizer to the lawn will not help… unless there is healthy soil below.
Soils that are gray or sandy colored generally contain less organic matter and you need to add topsoil.
Top Dressing will add nutrients to the sandy soil.
Don’t add too much at one time, make sure you can still see grass blades through the soil. This process is called top dressing and needs to be done every 3 to six months… until you see results.
Once your new turf is established, give us a call and we will gladly come out and recommend a lawn care program for you.
Erin Harlow, Horticulture Agent III at Columbia County Extension Office, wrote an article in the November/December 2021 issue of Pest Pro Magazine that addresses Florida soil and the amendments that can be made to improve the plant nutrition uptake.
Soil is rarely uniform throughout a landscape. To understand the soil on your accounts, you should understand the common soil texture in your area, the amount of organic matter in the soil, the soil compaction or bulk density, and how all of these factors may influence the health of plants.
Soil is divided into three categories depending on the size of the particle: sand, silt or clay. The percentage of each in your soil will determine what type of soil is on your site. The composition of the soil also influences factors such as water retention and how it moves in your landscape.
Most Florida soil is sand, but the panhandle of Florida has more clay layers. The larger the particle size, the larger the pore space, which means that water can flow through these spaces faster. For your plants, this means that water may move out of the root zone quickly, requiring more supplemental irrigation.
Florida soils tend to have low organic matter — less than 4 percent. Organic matter plays a huge role in soil health. Improving the amount of organic matter in your soil can increase the potential for nutrient uptake by your plants (cation exchange capacity), increase the porosity of the soil, provide food for microbes, bind pollutants, and reduce compaction. Most labs that test for soil nutrients can test for organic matter, including the University of Florida Extension Soil Testing Laboratory Soil compaction is another factor that can influence plant health.
