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Fly repellent herbs


Fly Repellent Herbs - Tips For Using Herbs To Repel Flies

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General Herb Care

By: Amy Grant

Image by chyball

It doesn’t really matter where you are located; flies seem to thrive almost anywhere. Truly, I think there is really nothing more annoying — except maybe mosquitoes. How can you win the battle without papering the house with fly strips or using toxic sprays to eradicate the pests? Believe it or not, there are herbs that repel flies with the additional benefit of looking beautiful and smelling fantastic.

The following fly repellent herbs can be planted just outside the door, in areas such as decks or patios where you tend to sit, or inside on the kitchen window — basically anywhere that you want to repel flies with herbs.

The fly repelling qualities of herbs are heightened when the foliage is bruised or moved about, allowing the essential oils — the fly bane — to release. Herbs that repel flies may also be of the dried variety and seem to work just as well.

Herbs that repel flies include:

Fly repellent herbs such as those above can be used fresh, dried, or made into a salve of their essential oil combined with beeswax and base oil. You can also blend fresh leaves from these herbs with vodka, strain, and then place them in a spray bottle to mist areas, yourself, or pets (also livestock) to repel flies.

The method of using herbs to repel flies and other pests and vermin has long been used before we came up with toxic chemicals in a can. Not only do they beautify, but they are environmentally friendly with aroma therapeutic benefit — and no can to dispose of.

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9 Versatile Garden Plants That Repel Flies (& Other Pests)

Summer is the season of alfresco dining, enjoying the heat and the sunshine while sharing a meal with the people you care about. Few things could ruin that wonderful image, except one pesky bug that plagues us all season long – flies.

Flies are actually wonderful insects with many roles in environmental care. They break down organic matter, attack other damaging insects in the garden, and draw wildlife to our gardens when acting as prey. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that they can be incredibly annoying, especially in the heat.

But you don’t have to whip out the fly swatter to tackle these bugs. Instead, opt for a natural method by planting and harvesting any of these nine plants believed to repel flies and make your garden gorgeous at the same time.

Lavender

One of the most popular ornamental plants around the world, lavender is a crowd (and personal) favorite. Not only does it produce gorgeous purple flowers that add a Mediterranean flair to any garden, but it also has a stunning scent that everyone instantly falls in love with.

Well, almost everyone.

This sweet smell that we gardeners adore, flies despise. The strong aroma of lavender flowers and foliage keeps flies far away, as well as a few other unwanted bugs. The key is the oil within the lavender plant. Whether you extract this oil or simply pick the flowers and display them around your house, you can be sure you won’t be bothered by bugs anymore.

Keep your lavender in a sunny position to get the most possible blooms for harvesting. Plant in well-drained soil in a dry area to avoid rotting. In fact, lavenders are one of the few plants that grow better in poor-quality soil, making them perfect for those tougher areas of the garden you just can’t seem to fill.

Rosemary

Often confused for some species of lavender due to the similar foliage, rosemary is another great pest repelling candidate. Flies don’t enjoy their intense smell, steering clear of any areas where rosemary is planted or kept. Luckily, that scent and flavor make them great for use in the kitchen.

A few rosemary sprigs placed around your outdoor seating area are a great way to keep large and small flies away during family gatherings or entertaining. If your kitchen is the problem, consider growing an entire plant on your windowsill indoors. As long as there is enough direct sunlight and low humidity, you should have no trouble growing this herb indoors.

Outdoors, rosemary likes very similar conditions to lavender. They are hardy plants that can grow into large and thriving shrubs with the right care. Alternatively, shape them into a low hedge to use them for both form and function.

Basil

The most effective herb for fly repelling is usually basil. This leafy plant has many uses in the kitchen and around the home, one of which is as an insect repellent. The oils released by the juicy leaves have a strong earthy scent that repels a range of indoor and outdoor pests, including flies.

Keeping a basil plant in the kitchen is the easiest way to make use of these abilities in your home. Unfortunately, basil is one of the trickier herbs to keep alive and thriving indoors.

Instead, grow them in a container or window box close to your kitchen to act as a guard against any bugs thinking of sneaking through your windows. You can also extract the oil and use it to make your own insect repelling spray safe for the whole family.

Basil is a moisture lover that needs plenty of water to thrive. Don’t let their soil dry out and keep them in a sunny position to get the most leaves out of your plant. Prune often to encourage branching, making your basil bushier.

Mint

It’s hard to think of anyone who doesn’t love the smell of mint. It’s fresh, delicious, and the different varieties each come in slightly different flavors to delight the senses.

As much as we love this bright and strong scent, flies and other pests absolutely hate it. The oils in every part of the plant, from stem to flower, keep away many bugs and even some small rodents.

These benefits are strongest when the leaves are fresh, but they also work when dried. Trim a few stems off the plant, hang them upside down and keep them around your kitchen and in cupboards to stop flies from settling down.

If you have trouble keeping herbs alive, mint is definitely the go-to. This plant is so easy to grow and spreads so rapidly that it can become invasive if not controlled. It’s best to keep your mint inside a pot in a container garden to keep an eye on growth. They are also ideal for growing indoors if you have a bright windowsill.

Pennyroyal

A member of the mint family, Mentha pulegium is a wonderful garden plant that doubles as a bug repellent. The spearmint-like scent deters flies and small rodents too. But unlike mint, this plant is not edible and is toxic to the liver, causing a number of problems if ingested.

For this reason, it is best kept in the garden to repel flies rather than brought indoors. It also has invasive tendencies and should be kept in a pot. You can dot this plant around your vegetable garden in containers to keep unwanted bugs out, including flies.

Keep up with pruning to ensure the stems don’t reach toward the ground as they spread quickly as soon as they touch the soil.

Catnip

Nepeta cataria is another easy-to-grow herb with a fast-spreading growth habit. Famous for its ability to attract cats, it is equally as powerful in keeping annoying bugs away and out of your home. The same oils and strong scents that cats love push flies away, making them ideal plants for lining paths and framing doorways to your home.

Catnip is an incredibly tolerant plant, requiring little water or fertilizer to grow well. As long as they get a sunny position and enough warmth throughout the year, they will thrive. Related to mint and pennyroyal, catnip is another spreader that’s best contained in a pot.

Bay Laurel

To grow an entire hedge of plants designed to keep pests out of your garden and away from your home, look no further than bay laurel. Also known as sweet bay, this shrub has an upright growth habit with cute yellow flowers.

Planted close together and in full sun, your bay laurel will create an almost impenetrable wall that any nearby flies will steer clear of. In the kitchen, they can also be used to keep flies out or thrown in grocery cupboards to stop weevils from invading.

To make them even more useful, these aromatic plants are used in a number of cuisines around the world for their intense flavor. Add one or two leaves to your pasta sauce, chili or curry to pack it with flavor, simply removing the whole leaf once the dish is done. You can also use them as a scented garnish to decorate dishes.

Marigold

Marigolds are incredibly versatile plants and one of the greatest companions in the vegetable garden. Their cheerful orange flowers are bound to put a smile on your face and can also be used as an edible garnish for salads and desserts. But where marigolds truly shine is in pest prevention.

Scientifically tested, marigolds are proven to keep a number of pests out of the garden, particularly whiteflies. The flowers can be used to produce an insect repellent spray that can be brought indoors, or you can grow them as cut flowers, trimming the blooms and placing them in a vase to keep flies away.

All these plants need is warmth and plenty of sun to thrive. Keep them well watered after planting and once established, they will be happy with being watered along with the rest of your garden. They make great container plants but grow best outdoors rather than inside due to their high light requirements in order to flower.

Sage

Sage isn’t the first herb to come to mind for use in the kitchen. But, if you’re looking to repel flies indoors and out, this is certainly not one to overlook. Their gorgeous fluffy grey leaves make great foliage contrasts in the garden that retain their earthy aroma even when dried. In fact, drying these leaves and burning them is one of the best ways to keep flies away.

Burning sage is also known as smudging, believed to remove negative energies from spaces. The leaves are dried, bound together and set alight to release their strong scent, filling any room with their herbaceous smell. You can even use them in your outdoor dining area just before a meal to keep any potential flies from settling down there.

If burning sage doesn’t appeal to you, you can simply fill a bowl with the dried leaves and place them wherever you want to keep fly-free. Combine it with the complimentary smell of rosemary to double the scent and the pest-repelling capabilities.

Flies may have an important role in the environment and cycle of life, but that doesn’t mean we want them hanging around our homes or gardens long-term. Use any of these wonderful plants to keep them away from entrances to your home and out of the house altogether. Plus, many of them are useful in the kitchen too.

TOP-7 repellant plants that repel flies and mosquitoes

Talking about the seasons, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin claims that he could fall in love with “red summer”, “if not for ... mosquitoes, but flies.” Yes, the presence of some insects significantly complicates the life of summer residents, if no action is taken. The problem is that some sprays, Velcro, coils and other protection methods can cause allergic reactions or irritation in people. It's good that plants that repel mosquitoes, flies, midges can come to the rescue.


Which plant repels with its smell

When you start to get interested in this question, it turns out that there are quite a lot of plants that protect the territory from harmful insects. Conventionally, they can be divided into three groups:

Essential oil repellents are represented by aromatic herbs: fragrant rue, coriander, fennel, cloves, wormwood, mint, tansy, thyme and others. All these plants contain essential oils that disorient insects in space and intoxicate them. The smell of some herbs has insecticidal properties.

Guardians of the vegetable world include carrots, mustard, onions, parsley, garlic, basil and others. Onions and carrots, for example, are often specially planted in tandem. After all, the onion fly does not tolerate the smell of carrots, and the carrot fly does not like the smell of onions.

Flower repellents are well known to many. These are marigolds, calendula, comfrey, yarrow, nivyanik, narrow-leaved lavender, large-rhizome geranium, pyrethrum, large nasturtium, chrysanthemums and many others. Particularly good results in repelling and even killing insects can be achieved if repellents are grown in arrays.


Examples of effective repellant plants

When choosing plants for your garden or flower bed, it is good to remember all the useful properties of these crops. Then you can land them not in an arbitrary order, but in such a way that they turn out to be as effective as possible. Let's talk about some of the plants listed above in more detail.


# 1 Lemon Melissa

Citronella is a popular mosquito repellent that exudes the scent of lemons. The lemon balm smells about the same. You can use Citronella as a repellant, but it is much more pleasant to plant lemon balm in your garden to enjoy its aroma and the absence of bloodsuckers.

Lemon balm is a mosquito repellent that should be used very carefully. Melissa loves to take over neighboring territories, pushing out other cultures. Since this plant has good winter hardiness, it has significant advantages in the fight for survival.

# 2 Lavender

Another plant that repels mosquitoes is lavender. However, its merits do not end there. Lavender is afraid of slugs, ants, aphids and even moths, which this plant successfully drives out of cabinets. Many will remember that the dried plant is placed in wardrobes. It is surprising that insects are afraid of lavender. After all, it has a beneficial effect on people: it improves sleep and mood, and calms.

Lavender seeds and seedlings of various varieties can be purchased at the Home and Garden store. Look, maybe you need such a fragrant protector?

# 3 Basil

This plant is considered to be universal. Basil is an excellent seasoning that gives meat dishes a special taste and aroma. If this plant is located near the dining table, mosquitoes, flies and even mosquitoes will not be able to annoy those who want to eat. After all, basil has the power of an excellent repellant.

If mosquitoes have already managed to bite someone from the household, it is enough to crush a few basil leaves between your fingers and apply them to the blister. The essential oil of this plant quickly relieves not only itching, but also the swelling itself.

#4 Mint

The smell of mint is well known to many. Peppermint's menthol flavor repels mosquitoes, aphids and whiteflies. This plant protects against flies. You can enhance the smell if you knead the mint leaves with your fingers. To protect yourself from mosquitoes with the help of this culture, you need to rub the areas of the body that are free from clothes with mint. When fresh, it repels ants well, and when dried, it repels mice.

#5 Calendula

To protect yourself from mosquitoes, it is enough just to plant calendula near the house - marigolds, well known and loved by us since childhood. This unpretentious and cold-resistant plant is easier to start than to breed. It has such an indomitable vitality. Many flower growers grow this medicinal plant in pots right in city apartments.

#6 Rosemary

If mint or basil leaves are kneaded with the fingers to bring out the more intense aroma of these plants, rosemary gives off a strong scent when its branches are simply swaying. Not surprisingly, in windy weather, the aroma of rosemary intensifies. If this greenery is grown at home in a flowerpot or pot, you can simply move this structure to get the same effect.

Mosquitoes cannot stand the smell of rosemary. And the itching from the bite of these little vampires can be relieved by applying a few crushed rosemary leaves to the swelling.

#7 Ageratum

This spectacular flowering annual attracts many gardeners. Its beauty does not go unnoticed. And the fact that he is also a repellent is just great. Those substances that this flower produces do not just repel or kill insects, but affect their development and, in particular, their reproductive system. Mosquitoes and midges simply try not to fly into the places where the ageratum grows.

#8 Thyme

A sunny meadow or even a window sill in a city apartment is a good place to grow thyme. Here, this plant feels great, exuding a rather strong aroma that becomes an insurmountable barrier to mosquitoes.

All of the listed plants protect people and animals from insects that annoy them. They are often grown on plots or even in apartments. However, there is a point to which attention should be paid. All these plants smell strongly, which means they can cause an allergic reaction in people. Before using flowers for flies and mosquitoes, make sure they are safe for you.

Plants repellent against flies and mosquitoes

Many flowers and plants are natural repellents - repellers, and even exterminators of insects - and as such have been known to mankind for centuries. If you want mosquitoes and flies to fly around your site a mile away - read on.

Repellent plants

All repellent plants can be conditionally divided into two broad categories: protectors of the garden from pests and defenders of man and his home from flies and blood-sucking arthropods - mosquitoes, mosquitoes, fleas or ticks.

We will definitely talk about what plants stand as a human shield in the way of the Colorado potato beetle and other eaters of lush greenery in the following articles. This text is about human protective plants.

Let's divide green "defenders" into two conditional categories to make it easier to plan plantings: essential oil crops and flowers. Efironoses are often planted compactly on a small piece of land - in the so-called "pharmaceutical garden" with medicinal plants. And very in vain. It is much more rational to distribute them throughout the garden in the form of border, framing or mixed plantings.

The same applies to repellant flowers, which have a place not only in flowerbeds, but also in locations where you and your guests spend a lot of time - around gazebos, summer kitchens, outdoor toilets, next to the veranda, swimming pool.


Essential oil plants that repel mosquitoes and flies

We must say right away that the list given here is not complete and is limited to plants that are easy to grow, and their repellent effect has been confirmed by scientists. When you finish reading, share your opinion about plants that repel mosquitoes and flies in the comments.


Basil. The most famous garden ethereal against flies and mosquitoes. The plant repels arthropods with a smell, and itching at the site of the bite can be removed if you knead and attach a leaf.

Mint and Melissa. Known plants from mosquitoes. Choose varieties with a more pronounced menthol flavor.

Rosemary. Grow this spicy herb under the windows of the house and closer to the summer kitchen. Essential oils of rosemary will scare away those mosquitoes that have passed the cordon of mint.

Agastache or anise lofant. A powerful mosquito repellant, a regular in any European garden or front garden, not widely used in our gardens. A perennial plant that does not require complex care.

Anise. Not only effectively disperses flies and mosquitoes, but also attracts beneficial pollinating insects to the garden.

Lemongrass. One of the most effective live mosquito repellants on earth. The plant is thermophilic and is grown only in a pot culture, but in summer it can be put on a veranda or terrace in a container. Seeds are rarely on sale, but we have them.

Thyme, also known as thyme. Perennial essential oil and beautiful groundcover. Mosquitoes fear him like the plague. To enhance the effect, you can rub a few shoots of thyme in your palms.

Fennel. Rocker planting plants can completely protect the summer kitchen, porch or terrace from flies. At the end of the season, the seeds can be harvested and used as a spice.

Railing. A beautiful plant with purple leaves, it is included in the vast majority of Japanese dishes, gives a spicy taste to salads, and is used in sushi. And once again and forever scares away flies.

Rue. An undeservedly forgotten spice and flavor for liqueurs, salads and desserts. In medieval engravings and paintings depicting court sessions, a bouquet of rue is always placed next to the judge. Do you know why? Because it is the most powerful repeller of fleas and bedbugs. Flies, mosquitoes and even ants are afraid of this plant like fire. A nice bonus is that rue is a frost-resistant perennial that is completely maintenance-free.


Flowers from flies and mosquitoes

Repellent flowers can not only scare away arthropod bloodsuckers, but also decorate the garden, and also effectively disguise such obligatory, but unsightly garden artifacts as a summer toilet and a compost heap.

Lavender. A wonderful perennial that retains repellent properties both cut and dried. In summer it will scare away flying arthropods, in winter it will scent clothes and bedding in the closet, destroying moths along the way. Lavender angustifolia grows well in the middle lane.

Calendula. Bright and extremely easy to grow, the annual scares away many garden pests and has pronounced repellent properties against mosquitoes.

Geranium. Both garden perennial and pot varieties have been guarding country houses from flies for more than 200 years.

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