Despite its power as a mosquito repellent, Defender is safe for beneficial flying insects like pollinators. Plus, it has a nice lemon eucalyptus scent! Check out our video below to learn more about how Defender mosquito treatment keeps outdoor pests at bay.
Defender Mosquito Spray
If you’re like me, you enjoy chilling outside but don’t like getting bug bites while you’re out there. There are plenty of backyard mosquito sprays that address pests in your lawn, but many have harsh chemicals that aren’t completely harmless to you, your kids and your pets. Plus, a lot of them smell bad.
That’s where Southland Organics’ Defender mosquito spray comes in. It’s a backyard mosquito repellent spray made with essential oils and natural stabilizers, but no harsh chemicals! Defender meets the FIFRA 25B Exempt product requirements, which means it meets the EPA’s qualifications for natural and safe products.
Defender is effective against mosquitos, ticks, fleas, ants and many other annoying insects. However, Defender is designed to be safe for pollinators and other beneficial insects. Read on to learn more about pollinator safety.
You can purchase Defender here!
How to Use Defender Mosquito Repellent
Here's how to apply Defender as a yard spray:
You'll need a mist blower to spray into your trees and bushes. Standard pump sprayers and garden hose sprayer coat the outside of plants, bushes and ornamental trees, but that’s not quite good enough if you want to be insect-free. Skeeters, midges, no-see-ums, and other tiny vampires like to hide deep inside the bushes. The blower pushes leaves up and away, allowing the mist to penetrate deep into the foliage. No need for a spray bottle that requires a lot of manual labor.
We recommend the Stihl 400 series or the Stihl 200. The Stihl 200 is a much lighter backpack and gets the job done, however it only holds about 2 gallons of water. The 400 series holds more, but gets pretty dang heavy over time.
You can mix 8 oz. of Defender backyard bug control spray with one gallon of water to cover 1,500 square feet. You can use your yard immediately after spraying Defender! No need to wait for toxins or nasty smells to subside before you enjoy your lawn.
Obviously, it’s great to spray during the summer time. That’s when we notice bugs the most! We also recommend spraying right before winter hits to make sure to kill any eggs that have just been laid. It's also best to spray during calm weather so that wind doesn't blow Defender away from your target area. Apply early in the spring or summer, depending on where you live, when it starts to get warm and mosquito eggs begin to hatch.
While the backpack sprayer is certainly the best method to getting the largest variety of insects, you could also spray Defender in a hose end sprayer. You can easily attach these to your garden hose. Add up to 32 oz. of Defender concentrate inside. Once you turn on the water in the hose, the water pressure activates the spray and you are ready to apply. The mixture of the hose end sprayer nozzle should be a 20:1 water to product to water ratio. You simply attach and spray.
The hose end sprayer method provides much more product at a higher concentrate, but it does not cover as much area. This is a good idea for lawns with heavy infestations of pests.
While we do see most success with the blower, a quick and easy dose of the sprayer works well too. The key is to coat most all outdoor surfaces and cover areas by storm drains if they are present.
Check out our other all-natural lawn products here!
No More Mosquito Bites
Defender backyard bug control spray is specifically targeted towards mosquitos, the most obvious of the backyard insect populations, but it works great on other insect pests too! On top of mosquitos, Defender kills other insects who transmit lyme disease like ticks. Defender is effective at killing insects like biting flies, fleas, deer ticks, red bugs, aphids, spider mites, whiteflies and ants.
Instead of spraying mosquito repellents on your body, treat your yard! If mosquitoes aren't there, they can't bite you.
Kill Mosquito Larvae, Too!
Some pest control products can be extremely toxic. Defender backyard bug control spray is all-natural and harmless to your family and pets.
You can have your outdoor fun immediately after spraying Defender. You can stop swatting biting bugs and feeling like you're being eaten alive by mosquitos! You can keep your family covered from mosquito bites while avoiding harsh chemicals. Defender is a contact kill pheromone interrupter and will disrupt future egg cycles. That's why we recommend spraying just before winter- kill the eggs so they won't hatch in the spring!
One of the best ways to control mosquito populations is to kill the larvae. Defender will kill the larvae that are nesting in trees and bushes so they never hatch and bit you. Defender is a contact kill, a pheromone interrupter and it will disrupt future egg cycles.
All-Natural Insect Repellent
Our blend of organic oils does two main things to lead to fewer mosquitos in your yard.
1) Suffocation
The blend of oils and the stabilizers in Defender combine to create a coating that dries on soft-bodied pests like mosquitos. They can't breathe when this coating is present. The stabilizers make the oil stay long enough to dry and do the job completely.
Mosquitoes hide during the day on the underside of plant and bush leaves. They are also attracted to any aquatic habitat such as gutter drains. They don't like to move during the day. That's why we recommend spraying during the day, when the mosquito population is mostly hiding in these leaves and still water.
2) Smell
When our Defender spray dries, the smell becomes unnoticeable to humans. We don't have the same kind of noses as insects. But for the insects, scent of the essential oils stays. The bloodsuckers do not like these odors. It says "DANGER!" to them. Beneficial insects are sometimes even attracted to these odors, so they don't mind visiting your lawn after Defender has dried.
The smell can stay for a month or longer depending on things like the temperature and precipitation. In summer months, it is often as important to repel mosquitoes as it is to kill them.
Defender creates a mosquito barrier around your yard. Insects that approach hit the natural wall and decide they need to be somewhere else.
Why not other mosquito sprays?
Many other mosquito repellents include chemicals that may not be safe for you, your pets or the environment. Defender yard spray is powered by oils and stabilizers, which do not impact humans or leave toxic residue for the environment.
While other mosquito sprays include chemical insecticides, they also leave a gross smell that you want to wash off immediately. But Defender has a nice lemon eucalyptus smell. While you won't be able to notice the smell shortly after spraying, rest assured that it won't stink when you spray it.
Mosquito control should not cost you peace of mind! Mosquito repellants can include worrying chemicals with uncertain long-term impacts on people, pets and plants. Defender is the best mosquito repellent to use as an all-natural backyard mosquito spray.
Safe for Pollinators
Defender is a unique insect repellent because it controls mosquitoes while being safe for pollinators! One of the main reasons for this is because of how Defender is applied. If you ignore the application instructions and directly spray a bee, butterfly or moth with Defender, that insect will not be happy and will probably die.
When you apply Defender with a mist blower, you kill mosquitoes and mosquito larvae by suffocating them where they hide during the day. Pollinators and other flying insects that are beneficial should not be in your line of fire. If any plants get Defender on them and pollinators pay them a visit, both the plants and the pollinators will be fine!
So as long as you're not deliberately trying to spray Defender directly on a butterfly, pollinators are totally safe from this spray solution.
Defender is the best mosquito spray for eliminating mosquitoes and their larvae without using sketchy chemicals.
For more helpful videos on gardening, lawn care and backyard chicken keeping, check out our other blog posts and our YouTube channel.
