There exists countless online articles that describe how homeowners can make their own non-toxic insecticide formulations with everyday household products like dish soap, herbs, spices, botanical extracts, and essential oils. While many of these articles may be based on sound scientific evidence, eliminating cockroach, ant, termite or any other insect pest infestation by means of a homemade insecticide alone is quite dubious. In fact, the most hard-to-control insect pests cannot be eliminated from infested structures by means of one method alone, whether the method is toxic, non-toxic, “organic,” or “all natural.”
It has often been said that non-toxic extracts of Osage orange, citrus peels, cucumber peels, and onions effectively repel cockroaches and other insect pests. Although these organic products have properties that are repellent to insects, there is no easy way to determine if they will be effective when used as a main ingredient in homemade insecticides. As it happens, however, the above extracts have already been tested for their usefulness as insecticide agents for cockroach control. While studies show that the above mentioned ingredients may alter cockroach movements to a small degree, they are not even close to being sufficient for the purpose of cockroach control.
Ultrasonic pest repellent devices are available in retail stores, and advertisements claim that they effectively repel a variety of insect and rodent pests by emitting ultra low or ultra high frequency sounds that pests cannot tolerate, and humans cannot perceive. Such an extraordinary device would certainly be well received by humanity, but unfortunately, multiple academic studies have demonstrated that ultrasonic pest repellent devices are largely worthless for pest control purposes. Researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Arizona have found that ultrasonic pest repellents have little effect on the behavior of German cockroaches, mosquitoes, rodents and other pests.
Have you ever used insecticidal soap or any other homemade insecticide to successfully control pests?