June Week 3

Organic Gardening Calendar
19 Weeks to first frost date in zone 6

With June comes the dead heading of all the May flowers. And ticks.

By: Kathi

Things you will need:
Scissors
Bucket to haul dead plants to the compost pile
Dry Ice
Sticky paper
Cardboard tubes
Cotton
permethrin
Guineafowl

Dead heading (removing spent blossoms) your flowers will encourage reblooming if they are annuals or perennials that set seed. If you cut the seed producing pod off before seeds are formed, most plants in an effort to procreate will shoot up more blooms and again try to make seed.

Not only does the dead heading encourage blooming, but on plants that will not rebloom, the energy that would have been spent making seeds is redirected to strengthening the root system. Another benefit of dead heading is two fold, 1) it makes the yard/garden look tended and well manicured, and 2) it eliminates frequently taller plant material that will harbor insects, particularly ticks.

Ticks carry lime disease and reproduce at astounding rates. There are two types of ticks, soft ticks and hard ticks. Both kinds of these ticks transmit a wider variety of pathogens than bacteria, protozoa, and viruses.


Soft tick on left. Hard tick on the right.

Hard ticks seek hosts by a behavior called "questing." Questing ticks like to climb up plants to a height of 24-36 inches and wait for the signal that there is a host passing by so they can drop off the plant onto you or your kids or pets. Some soft ticks seek hosts by questing on low-lying vegetation, but the vast majority are nest parasites, residing in sheltered environments such as burrows, caves, or nests. The presence of higher levels of carbon dioxide as well as heat and movement serve as stimuli for questing behavior. The feeding behavior of many soft ticks can be compared to that of fleas or bedbugs, as once established, they reside in the nest of the host, feeding rapidly when the host returns and disturbs the contents.

People pick up the vast majority of ticks when in the woods, or come in contact with weeds, shrubbery, brush, or pets that have roamed off into taller vegetation... Well-kept lawns are pretty safe, unless you have moles, mice, rabbits or other critters that nest in your yard.

So how do you control ticks?

Organic tick control is not the easiest thing to do. Integrated pest management…one of those corporate buzz terms…is what you need, unfortunately.

Most important: Keep your yard clean and your lawn mowed. Staying away from taller grasses and shrubbery is not happening in my yard. I like my zebra grass and my forsythias.

Since ticks are attracted by carbon dioxide, you can set a block of dry ice out near where you have found a nest, and the ticks will be drawn to it. I suggest you place a paper under the dry ice to keep from freezing the ground and use the paper as a tick trap by putting something sticky on it. The sticky can be anything that will hold them in. Honey or syrup works pretty well. Or use a commercially available sticky paper of some kind.

Because so many ticks live in burrows with their blood host, you can reduce deer ticks by placing paper towel or toilet paper cardboard tubes stuffed with, a synthetic chemical permethrin-treated cotton. Mice will collect the cotton to line their nests. The pesticide on the cotton kills immature ticks feeding on the mice. You must of course put the tubes where the mice hang out, like under dense shrubs. Do it twice a year; early spring and late summer. You should notice reduction in the tick population the following year. For some reason, this does not work on the West Coast. Permethrin is OK to use this way, but NOT in a lawn spray, where it is seriously or fatally toxic to cats, and fish. It’s not good for you either.

There is also a parasitic wasp Ichneumon wasp Ixodiphagus hookeri that will lay it’s eggs into the ticks. When the eggs hatch the emerging wasp attack and kill their host. Parasitic wasps can be ordered online.


If you live where you are allowed to do it, and your yard is fenced, 2 Guineafowl will clean your yard of ticks, fleas, and all manner of insect pests. This is by far the best and most effective treatment of all listed, and is certainly the laziest way to control ticks I know of. Not to mention you get eggs.