How to keep away flies and mosquitoes?

[KylieWasHere]

We’ve just moved house and the new house is full of flies (the bin type) and mosquitoes (the biting type!)! They seem to be coming in from outside. We have a garden which has a fair share of flies. How can we stop them? What works?? No pets here.

We have window midge screens / blinds to keep everything out of the house and you can use citronella candles in the garden .

Mosquitoes breed in water so make sure there's none they can use. Even rainwater that's gathered in a pot can do it. I wonder if one of your neighbours has a pond? Flies like anything rotting which could be compost, fox poo etc - have a scout round and see where they're gathering. We had some weird sheep wool product to stop slugs and that attracted blue bottles. You could tack up some netting at the windows to keep them out til you've got the house under control.

To keep flies away, plant herbs Herbs to repel flies

Yes our next door neighbours have a pond 😩 we have a “water feature” in our garden but it’s dry - though I suspect it gathers rain water when it does rain.

is that anything we can do to stop the mosquitoes coming in? We are all full of bites!

@Pricklesinperil thanks I will keep that in mind for the spring!

You’re welcome @KylieWasHere - herbs are very effective - I’ve planted them all around the back and rent and by the bins and NO flies!

for the mosquitoes- perhaps screen them out with nets? Door mosquito net

We had a similar mosquito door net to the one Prickles mentions except with velcro - got it from Amazon - and it did work. Last year we wanted to open up French windows so we bought some white garden netting, what you'd put over plants to keep birds off, and tacked it up. It looks ok and it works. We did try citronella oil but that didn't do much.

If the mosquito problem returns next summer I’ll look up the nets. For some odd reason the mosquitoes are only upstairs in the bedrooms but not downstairs. I killed four yesterday before bedtime!

I also found some non toxic mosquito larvae killer on Amazon so I might gently ask the neighbour if she could pop some in her pond. Then we should know if it’s coming from there or not.

I think something to keep the water moving is supposed to help too. Good luck with it. Our problem has reduced by 90 per cent this year but no real idea why.

Do you have pot plants? I'm getting mosquitoes and tiny fruit flies and I have plants. I've got those sticky things and plant bug spray. Make sure the soil isn't over-wet. Keeping my fingers crossed they go away soon!

@xfgdhfgnhkk007 ohh there are LOTS of pot plants we inherited with the house. Could mosquitoes be breeding there?? I have those sticky things, will go stick them everywhere now.

Yes I'm pretty sure it's that. I hardly had any this year but they seem to have appeared this week all of a sudden (and I have a lot of plants). I hate them!