3 natural solutions for insect control

If insects are bugging you, skip buying expensive (and toxic) pesticides and turn to these three natural solutions. You'll save money while gaining peace of mind that your family is not exposed to harmful chemicals.

How's this for a great way to get rid of flies and guarantee your family fresh pesto throughout the years? Put several basil plants around your kitchen. Flies hate basil, so they'll stay away. Not only will your kitchen be flyless, but it will smell like summer all year long.

Instead of spending big bucks on some toxic insecticide, keep ants away from your household surfaces with vinegar.

• Fill a clean spray bottle with a 50/50 solution of water and white vinegar
• Spray anywhere you see ants infiltrating — along baseboards, on kitchen counters, in moist bathrooms
• Unlike poisons, the vinegar is 100 percent harmless, and a litre (or quart) costs pocket change

Don't pay upward of 20 bucks for a 450-gram (one-pound) can of roach powder at your hardware store, when you can buy the same thing — boric acid — for a fraction of the price.

• A white powder used as a laundry whitener and disinfectant, borax is also lethal to roaches
• You can make your own roach-control powder by mixing equal parts borax and flour, and then sprinkling the mixture where you've seen roaches — along the base of basement walls, in jar lids placed in cabinets (even though it is relatively safe to use around the house, do not place the borax where children or pets can get into it)
• The starch in the flour attracts the roaches. The mixture sticks to their legs. They track it back to their nests, where it kills both the ones you see and other roaches

No one wants to share their home with pests, but that doesn't mean you have to resort to pricey or dangerous chemicals to solve your insect problems. The next time you're being bugged, try these natural solutions first.