Everything You Need To Know About Spraying Yard with Dawn for Fleas
A yard is a serene place of a home; the space is used for your pastimes, such as your children playing, dining outside with friends and family, or having BBQ outside. But a yard’s maintenance needs time and resources.
Fleas are a troublesome part of your yard maintenance. Furthermore, they can latch onto your pet or children from your yard, and their bites can cause sores or rashes. Now you don’t want these tiny creatures to wreak havoc. Do you?
Well, if you use dawn as dish soap, then say goodbye to your flea problems because one of the most extraordinary uses for the dawn is other than working as dish soap. In other words, it works as a DIY pesticide. So here we will unwrap the topic about spraying yards with dawn for fleas.
How To Know If Your Yard Has Fleas
You will see if you have a pet, they have rashes or itching themselves a lot. This is because fleas latch onto warm body animals.
One way to determine is to take a tall white piece of a sock, wear it and walk around your yard, especially where your pets spend the most time. Then, if there are fleas, you can spot them on the socks.
Why Use Dawn Dish Soap For Fleas In Yards
First, the dawn dish soap is cheap and relatively easy to use; no complex process or ingredients are required to make a pesticide soap. Just add water with 1 ounce of dish soap, and you are good to go, which makes it well-liked across many places.
How Does Dawn Kill Fleas?
The ingredient surfactant in dawn creates a surface tension that builds up an uncompromisable situation for the exoskeleton of the fleas, which helps them stay afloat on the water surface.
Due to their floating mechanism being compromised, they drown and die while being washed. Furthermore, if you spray on them, then they get dehydrated due to the chemicals in the soap, which also kills them. Moreover, dawn also kills the flea eggs.
Spraying Yard With Dawn For Fleas
All you need is a spray solution made with dawn dish soap. Follow these steps.
- Mix water with dawn in a garden sprayer.
Mix water with 1 ounce of the dish soap and shake it up from top to bottom to mix correctly.
- Spray
Spray the whole yard with the solution where you might suspect fleas might be. Keep spraying till you have covered the entire area. It might be best to do this in the evening because they are primarily active at that time and you are more likely to find them at that time.
- Take confirmation
Check again the day later to see any more of the fleas, if you see some, that means those are hatched from the eggs left behind. In that case, respray in the evening to eliminate the rest of them. Spray after every 10-12 days.
- Try drowning them
You can set this up as a trap for the fleas by filling a bowl of water with dish soap mixed in it. The fleas will jump on the water, floating. The components of the dish soap will help in drowning them.
- Wash your pet
You can also use the dish soap solution to wash your pet to kill the rest of the fleas that may be in your pet’s furs.
Does Using Dawn Dish Soap Harm The Plants Or The Grass In Your Yard?
The answer, in short, is no. Although this may be true, generally using dish soap or any dish soap harms plants or grass unless it contains sodium lauryl sulfate. But excessive usage of other dish soaps is also harmful, we all know that.
However, dawn dish soaps contain strong chemicals like sodium lauryl sulfate, and excessive usage is a red alert for the grass and plants in your yard. They can dry up all the natural moisture and oil in the grass or plants and kill them. That’s how dish soap also kills fleas by dehydrating them. That’s why only an ounce of dish soap is recommended for making the solution.
But if you use the trap with a bowl filled with water and dish soap, that may save your grass and plants, keeping your yard’s ambiance.
So in brief, getting rid of the fleas by spraying dawn soap on the yard can come with a cost if you spray too much that your yard has to pay.
Alternatives For Dish Soap To Kill Flea
Yes, there are other ways you can use to kill fleas if you are hesitant about damaging your grass and plants by using dish soap.
Vinegar
Beside stopping bugs to enter your home, you can use vinegar as a natural spray to kill fleas. However, they hate the taste and the smell of the vinegar. Using distilled white vinegar will help get rid of the fleas. It can also help you to remove stickers from your yard.
Beneficial Nematodes
They are a type of worm that helps gardens or yards in different ways. For example, one of them is combating a variety of pets, including fleas which inject deadly bacteria into the pest’s body and feed on them. They are, of course, safe for the garden, your pets, and your children.
Insecticide Soap
These soaps specialize in killing insects and pests by suffocating them and removing their protective moisture shield, hence dehydrating them. They are an effective and low toxicity solution for dish soaps in killing fleas. You can check Garden Safe insecticidal soap on amazon.
Diatomaceous earth
Diatomaceous earth is a type of powder made from fossilized aquatic organisms found in water bodies. They also kill the pest in the same way as the dish soaps by breaking their exoskeleton and dehydrating them.
Final Words
Dawn dish soap has proven to be an effective and easy way to remove fleas from your yard. But it is essential to keep in mind about adding excessive dish soaps for which harm shall occur on your grass.
So, if you are worried about grass and plants, go for the alternatives mentioned above. Or, if you are looking to remove those fleas hassle-free and easy way, dawn dish soap is your choice.
