Places Where Fleas Live In The Yard

Your yard can be the source of flea infestation in your pets and home. It’s a perfect habitat for fleas to lurk and latch onto your pet or you.

So, where do fleas live in the yard? And how to ensure that you eliminate fleas in the yard, so there’s no chance of fleas anchoring themselves on your pets and you?

Let’s find it out.

Where Do Fleas Live In The Yard And Around Your Home

Fleas hide in the dense bushes and tall grasses around your home’s damp and shady places. Fleas don’t prefer direct sunlight. So, they’ll hide in the vegetation that receives less or no sunlight.

However, if too many fleas are in the yard, they can even hide in the firewood piles, damp wooden pieces, foliage, and even inside the cracks of your outdoor furniture.

What Attracts Fleas To Your Yard?

Moisture attracts fleas to your yard. Also, wild animals like raccoons, skunks, squirrels, and strays like cats can transfer fleas to your yard.

If your yard has dense vegetation and moisture sources, like leaky pipes, swimming pools, ponds, or fountains, it becomes a perfect hiding place for fleas.

The water sources increase the dampness level of your yard, which fleas need. And the dense vegetation provides fleas places to hide.

How Long Can Fleas Live In The Yard?

Adult fleas can survive in your yard for 2-3 months without a host and blood meal. If they don’t get any blood meals or host within this time period, fleas die.

The female adult fleas will not lay eggs in the yard if they don’t get the blood meals. And for bloodmeals, they need a host.

Female fleas need bloodmeals to develop and process their eggs inside their bodies before laying them.

Adult female fleas will lay their eggs within 48 hours of their blood meal.

Fleas come from outside by latching onto your pet or things like clothes, luggage, and cardboard boxes. 

Your pets are a major carrier of fleas inside your home. And they can also transfer fleas in your bed.

With regular bloodmeals, adult fleas can survive for 12 months. And one single adult flea can lay up to 2000 eggs in these 12 months. 

A female adult flea can lay 4-8 eggs after a blood meal. And she lays up to 2000 eggs in her entire lifetime. 

So, a single flea inside the home can cause an infestation if it’s an egg-carrying adult female flea.

When the flea infestation inside the house gets severe, fleas can hide in unlikely places like hardwood floors and soft furnishings like couches.

Some fleas and flea eggs can drop off your pet’s fur and cause fleas in pet beds and carpets. 

How To Know If There Are Fleas In Your Yard?

The best way to know if fleas are in your yard is by walking through the vegetation in your yard by wearing a pair of trousers and socks. If fleas are in those areas, then fleas will latch onto your trousers (below the waist region) and socks.

Walking through the overgrown grasses and shrubs in the shady areas around moist places in your yard will make the fleas hook themselves onto your trousers. 

Fleas look like tiny brown bugs with long hind legs. They’re not typically oval. Fleas are flat teardrop-shaped bugs with a tapered rear end.

Another way to be sure that there can be fleas in your yard and around your house is when you notice your pet scratching itself often.

You’ll need to inspect your pet for fleas.

However, many other parasitic bugs are not fleas (like ticks) that hide in the same places in the yard where fleas hide. These bugs that are not fleas can also infect your pets and make them sick.

How To Get Rid Of Fleas In The Yard?

The best way to get rid of fleas in the yard is to make your uninhabitable and unattractive for them. 

Here’s how you can get rid of fleas in your yard and even prevent future flea infestation in the yard – 

• Remove overgrown bushes and tall grasses, especially in the shady places
• Do not overwater your yard
• Remove sources of stagnant water
• Scatter diatomaceous earth on the shady places
• Attract birds and bugs that eat fleas to your yard.
• Keep your yard clean, and don’t let twigs and leaf litter gather in the yard
• Scatter insecticide granules around the home’s perimeter to create a barrier
• Mow your lawn and aerate the lawn
• Let your yard receive maximum sunshine by removing things that are blocking the sun’s rays

Chopping off overgrown vegetation and tall grasses ensures that fleas and other parasitic bugs like ticks don’t dwell in your yard.

Many biting bugs hide in dense bushes.

Fleas are moisture bugs. A moist and damp yard will always attract fleas during the flea season, which is the summer.

So, ensure that you don’t overwater your yard and don’t let water stagnate your yard. 

Both cause the dampness level in the yard soil to rise. That makes your yard attract fleas and many home-invading pests, including termites.

Also, ensure that there are no water leakages in your yard. Leaky pipes in the yard increase the yard’s moisture level and hence make your yard a magnet for fleas.

Once you’ve removed the unnecessary vegetation and controlled the moisture, it’s time to use a reliable flea killer.

Many home products kill fleas.

Diatomaceous earth is one of them.

Scatter generous amounts of diatomaceous earth in places where you removed the thick vegetation. 

It’ll be best to also use diatomaceous earth in places like firewood piles and mulch beds.

The Diatomaceous earth contains diatoms, which are fossilized plankton. 

Diatoms are sharp. These sharp particles break through the exoskeleton of bugs and penetrate their bodies.

As diatomaceous earth is a desiccant, it absorbs the moisture and fat inside the fleas.

Result?

The fleas die when diatomaceous earth come in contact with fleas.

But diatomaceous earth isn’t an instant flea killer. It’ll take a couple of hours for the fleas to die. 

If you want instant results, then use a flea-killing spray and spray it in your yard.

Wear a mask while using diatomaceous earth because the particles can suspend themselves in the air, and you might inhale them.

Also, please read the safety instructions on the insecticide spray, and follow them before using the sprays.

Finally, maintaining a clean yard or garden is also essential to keep bugs like fleas away.

So, don’t let leaf litter, rotting pieces of wood, twigs, and branches accumulate in your yard.

Don’t let foodstuff and organic wastes rot in the yard’s garbage bins for days. 

Also, if there’s a compost pile, then regularly use peppermint oil spray on the pile to repel any bugs from inhabiting or nesting in the compost pile.

Do not let too many shady areas develop in your yard. Fleas hate sunlight. 

And if the maximum area of your yard receives enough sunlight, your yard won’t attract fleas.

Do Fleas Live In The Grass?

Fleas live in the random tall grasses that grow outdoors. But fleas don’t live in the lawn grass.

When short, lawn grasses don’t provide fleas enough protection from direct sunlight. That deters fleas from living in the lawn grass.

Another contradictory reason for fleas not living in the lawn grasses is that too much sprinkling makes the lawn soil wet. The flea larvae die when the moisture in the soil exceeds 25%.

Heavy dampness also liquefies the flea feces.

Flea feces are the only source of nutrition for flea larvae. 

Fleas do not live in the dirt, either. The dirt or dust layer is too dry for the fleas to survive.

Conclusion

Fleas live in the thick overgrown vegetation in the moist and shady places in your yard.

To get rid of fleas in the yard, you’ll need to make your yard unattractive for fleas on top of eliminating them.

This guide laid out the steps on how you can do it. 

Fleas in the yard will latch onto your pets and even onto you. They’ll use you and your pets to get inside your home to cause an infestation. 

So, you must follow the steps in this post to eliminate fleas in the yard and avoid a flea infestation in your home.