Weekend Gardener Your Weekly Electronic Gardening Guide
Practical Horticulture for Busy People.

All About Ticks

How to Avoid Them in Your Garden

Gardening season is well underway, and so is tick season. Ticks can attack when you are out mowing your lawn or digging weeds. Even your pets can harbor them and bring them inside your home. Knowledge is your best defense against these critters.

Some Facts on Ticks

Ticks are members of the spider family (arachnids), and there are many species found all over the US. They are blood-sucking creatures that attack humans, dogs, cats, and other animals. They can be found in wooded, grassy, or brushy areas, and can transmit diseases such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, ehrlichiosis, and Lyme disease.

Picture Ticks are reddish brown to dark brown in color, and range in size from 1/16" to 1/8". They are flat in shape, but when engorged with blood, they become round and increase in size up to 1/2" in diameter. They can live for up to 18 months without food or water, and when they do find a suitable host, some remain attached for up to 15 days.

To find their next meal, most species engage in "questing." A tick will crawl up the nearest grass blade, weed stalk, or shrub, anchor its hind legs, and wave its other legs in the air. When a suitable host passes by, it latches on. Some species can sense the carbon dioxide exhaled by a host.

After climbing aboard, ticks often wander around on their host and may even have a quick taste before settling down. Then they attach themselves by sinking their heads and mouth parts into the host's flesh. As they feed, their mouth parts become anchored with a cement-like chemical that makes them difficult to remove.


Deer ticks in the East and black-legged ticks in the West both transmit Lyme disease, which is caused by a microorganism inside the tick. The nymph stage in its life cycle is the most likely stage at which they carry the spirochete. Research indicates that to transmit the disease, the tick needs to feed on you for at least 24 hours. So, it's important to find the tick and remove it promptly. Unfortunately, adult deer ticks are tiny - about the size of a sesame seed - and the nymphs are even smaller, about the size of a poppy seed. Iowa State University has an image of Ixodes scapularis (the black-legged or deer tick) at various stages of life, with a dime in the picture for comparison.

Save Removal Procedures

PictureIf you sharply pull a tick off your skin, or are successful in brushing it away, its mouth parts usually remain embedded. This can cause an infection at the bite site. Also, if you apply Vaseline, gasoline, a hot match, or anything else in an attempt to suffocate or kill the tick, you'll just end up irritating it enough to possibly cause it to spew the spirochetes into you. Instead, use fine-pointed tweezers and grasp the tick as close to its mouth parts as possible (even if this means pulling out a little of your own skin in the process). Avoid crushing the tick's body, or you'll expose yourself to any disease organisms in its blood. Slowly, steadily pull upward and the tick will come loose. Kill it with rubbing alcohol and flush it down the toilet or wash it down the drain. Then disinfect the bite area with rubbing alcohol or povidone iodine (Betadine), and disinfect the tweezers too. Watch the bite area for the next couple of weeks to see if a rash forms, and if so, seek medical attention promptly.

It's a good idea to have an old pair of tweezers and rubbing alcohol or Betadine handy in your first aid kit, so you'll know just where to reach if you find a tick on yourself.

If you suspect you were bitten by a black-legged or deer tick, save it in a small glass jar filled with rubbing alcohol, and take it to your county's cooperative extension office (look up their number in your phone book) to see where you can get it positively identified.


A Checklist of Precautions

PicturePrevention is the best medicine. Here is a list of precautions you can follow to avoid becoming a meal:

  • Be aware that ticks are most active from mid-April through September.

  • Because ticks become less active in winter, consider saving some outdoor chores for that season. For instance, cut wood in late fall and early winter.

  • Clean up brush and wood piles. These places harbor rodents, which are the major source of meals for larval and nymphal ticks.

  • Keep your lawn mowed; well-maintained turf areas are less likely to harbor ticks than other places.

  • Don't go out barefoot or in open sandals.

  • In tick-infested areas, expose as little skin as possible. Wear light-colored clothing (you'll be able to spot ticks better), long sleeves and pants, and tuck shirts into pants and pant legs into boots or socks.

  • Conduct a bodily inspection for ticks at least once a day. Especially check hidden or hairy areas like the groin, armpits, and scalp. Tick checks are best done by one person checking over another.

  • Apply an insect repellent to your clothing, shoes and skin. Products containing a chemical called DEET are good tick repellents, but they must be sprayed on clothes only, not skin.

  • Buy a tick collar or another form of repellent for your dog or cat. Not only will it protect your pet, but it will also help prevent your pet from bringing ticks indoors where they can become established. WG



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