information from www.asktrapperjohn.com Sometimes spiders will invade your home by living around the corners of the siding, around the window and door frames, behind the shutters and at the bottom and top edges of your siding. You can solve this problem for quite some time with the following:
Using a hose end sprayer, fill the jar with either liquid or powder Tide detergent. Set the mixture at 1 to 32 or as close as you can get, and the nozzle for stream (the round hole) and spray the house. Starting at the soffit at one corner, work your way around the house back to the starting point. Make sure you do a good job at the places mentioned above. There will be lots of suds but don't worry about that, they will fade away in about an hour and you won't be able to tell that there were any suds at all. DO NOT RINSE! If you rinse the soap spray away, it won't work. Be careful when spraying, this will kill you flowers, shrubs and grass if soaked. Sometimes you will have an invasion of spiders into the house as winter come on. Check out "Osage Oranges" under Trapper Topics. Then again they may come in during the summer. In that case look under "Insecticide" Osage Oranges The fruit of the Osage Orange tree is great for repelling all insects and spiders. However, if you pick the fruit before the frost knocks it from the tree, it will rot and draw fruit flies. The way I do it is this; when the weather report is for a hard frost over night I clean up all the fruit under the trees. The next day after the frost, everything under the trees is good to use. If we can't clean up under the tree before a frost, we set the fruit on newspaper in the basement and watch it for a week or so to see which ones develop the tale tail cottony moss type fungi. Once you have decided that the fruit you have is good, you will need to look at the fruit and decide how many you need to put in each room and the basement. If they are the size of a baseball, you will need one in each of the four corners of the room, for a 9'X12' room. If they are the size of a grapefruit, two will do, one in each apposing corner of the 9'X12' room. Of course larger rooms need more and smaller rooms less. Always put the fruit into something so as not to stain the carpet etc. Now as the fruits decay they will look bad and you will think they are starting to rot. However, if you don?t see a white, gray or cream colored cottony substance growing on the fruit, they are okay. What happens is, as they deteriorate they give off an essence that very faintly smells like citrus. This is what repels the crawly critters. As long as you don?t see the cotton fungus, everything is going well. In the spring the fruit will be hard and very light, having lost it weight through out the process. To be sure you are actually seeing a cottony fuz, feel it, if it?s smooth it?s just a spot. You will see a variety of different colored spots on the fruit as it decays, don?t worry about this, it?s normal. If you check your fruit every couple of day for the first three weeks and find everything is good, they will be okay until next May. Homemade Insecticide Put a gallon of boiling water into a bucket and stir in 2 cups of Tide detergent. When completely dissolved, put in a cup of kerosene and stir until it is absorbed. When cool, you can spray the basement and get rid of the insects, including spiders, for approx. 10 weeks. Also good for around the outside of the house, but not on plants. Be careful where you use this spray, it could stain something. Check it first before spraying and surface. ------------------------------------ Send any questions regarding list management to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To listen to the show archives go to link http://www.acbradio.org/pweb/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=33&MMN_position=47:29 Or ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/handyman/ The Pod Cast address for the Blind Handy Man Show is. http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=saturday Visit The Blind Handy Man Files Page To Review Contributions From Various List Members At The Following address: http://www.jaws-users.com/JAWS/handyman/ Visit the archives page at the following address http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ If you would like to join the JAWS Users List, then visit the following address for more information: http://www.jaws-users.com/ For a complete list of email commands pertaining to the Blind Handy Man list just send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blindhandyman/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blindhandyman/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
