Cockroaches are a persistent infestation that will live in your home permanently and continue to grow in population until you are forced out of your own home. If you do not deal with the infestation either by hiring a professional licensed exterminator or by dealing with it on your own your home will not last long. Cockroaches are filthy creatures that live in sewers. They crawl on your food and defecate and eat it leaving their poisoned saliva. They can cause food poisoning and even a staph infection. They are not something to be trifled with and they are nearly immune to any home remedies. There is also a broad range of species including the big four in Ontario. The oriental cockroach is a difficult cockroach to deal with using home remedies because it lives primarily in the sewer and enters homes through drains. Preventing this requires having the plumbing between your home and the sewer dug up a filter being placed between your plumbing and the city sewer that will stop anything from getting through but may also cause clogs. The German cockroach is a nightmare to behold with its segmented carapace and its females are capable of breeding twice to three times as fast as other cockroaches. They are also much smaller than other cockroaches and can hide in smaller spaces. The German cockroach ootheca can hold up to sixty eggs while other cockroaches barely get more than 12. The German cockroach may require professional treatment. The American cockroach is large, very large and smooth. They are amber in colour and are worshiped in some parts of North and South America. The Brown Banded cockroach is also very common and very small, even smaller than the german cockroach but with far fewer young per ootheca. This makes them hard to find but still not too difficult to kill.
The process is simple and takes two stages. Stage one is prevention. Step two is the treatment. Do not even try to treat the infestation until you have control over it. This means you will need to take away their access to both food and water. You can do this by storing all food either in the fridge or in a hard plastic, glass or metal container that seals tightly. It must seal very tight because baby cockroaches are so small they can crawl through the threading of a metal cap on a glass bottle. So make sure you store your food very well and seal it very tightly in containers with secure locking mechanisms and rubber stoppers to make an airtight seal. Fido glass jars with a rubber ring and a steel locking mechanism are the best choice for storing food safely.
The second thing cockroaches want is water. So make sure to tighten all leaky faucets and to make sure the hose outside does not leak because that will attract cockroaches to your property. Make sure you do not have a bird feeder, leave food of any kind outside like feeding children messy foods and putting them outside so they don’t make a mess in the house. That is how you get cockroaches. Do not feed pets outside. Clean your outdoor cooking area vigorously like you would a restaurant kitchen. Keep everything that could be eaten away, sealed or in the garbage which should also be sealed and stored in the garage. The rule for garbage is this. If you can close the lid and still smell the garbage then so can the cockroaches.
Once you have done this you will need to start stage two. You have control now over the infestation. The cockroaches have no food or water and they are likely very hungry. Now is the time to get them. Use domestic grade gel bait purchased from a hardware store or grocery store. Use this everywhere you have been seeing high activity, especially in the kitchen and bathroom. Put it inside the oven mechanics, not the oven itself but in the back, most ovens have a cover like a shelf at the back, take it off and put bait inside. Also put it inside any mechanical part of any appliances, large or small. You must then get diatomaceous earth, food safety is best and can be purchased from a grocery store. These are the ancient remains of million-year-old single-cell organisms. In essence, it is silica dust so fine it is lighter than air. It will not harm a human at all, though wear eye protection if you are using it vigorously. The dust is, on a microscopic level razor-sharp pieces of silica that catch in the joints of the cockroaches and slices their waxy coating. Their internal organelle fluid then leaks out and they desiccate. This can be puffed into tiny crevices and all over the baseboards and floors in every hole and opening you can find. This will kill the cockroaches effectively if you keep the workup and don’t let up. The cockroaches are fighting for their lives, you need to do the same.
