Anyone with any help for a person who gets chiggers REALLY badly? Just walking through the bean patch (not even picking!) is apt to give me a week's worth of itching and welts!

-- John Stone (patjstones@scican.net), July 04, 2001

Answers

Consuming large portions of garlic is supposed to help, also coating your legs with witch hazel has been said to work before entering the garden.

-- mitch hearn (moopups1@aol.com), July 04, 2001.

Oh my.... i KNOW what you are experiencing. I got this tip from a logger w emet when we lived in VA. he said to take a bit of butter or margarine and add salt, then slather on the itchy areas. I got into chiggers so bad one time i wa sdesperate and tried it, it worked great! It smothers the chiggers and helps to heal the area. Hope this helps.

Bernice

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), July 04, 2001.

They are evil little things, aren't they? I used to get awful chigger bites every summer until I worked at a childrens' camp in central Missouri. The nurse there gave me sulfur powder to dust my socks and I never had a problem with chiggers after that. It stinks a little but not so much that anyone else could smell it on you. Check with chemical supply places.

-- Anne Lewis Sieck (AnneSieck@hotmail.com), July 04, 2001.

I always drink about 2 oz of apple cider vinegar before picking blackberries or working in the woods during chigger season. Its kinda rough but it seems to keep them off me and keeps the ticks off too and they are really bad this year.

-- David (bluewaterfarm@mindspring.com), July 04, 2001.

John,

Lye soap. As soon as I come in from a "chigger spot", I jump in the shower and lather up really good with lye soap. Let it soak for a few minutes then rinse off. I've had good results so far.

-- Mona in OK (modoc@ipa.net), July 05, 2001.

I'm told a cup of bleach in a tub of hot water will take care of them, though I'm not sure I want to try it myself. I've found just rinsing my legs frequently with the hose while I'm out does a pretty good job too (but then they don't bother me all THAT much and I wear sandals all the time).

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), July 05, 2001.

Was told that horsemint is a good natural substitute for sulphur powder (which can be toxic and is not good to be aborbed through the skin). Supposedly you can just take a blossom head and rub it around your ankle (assuming you're wearing long pants and high socks) and other exposed areas. I think it's interesting that we have a particularly bad chigger season and a bumper crop of horse mint in the same year... Does anyone know if the horsemint works? I usually don't have any problems but it would be handy to know.

-- pat (zumende@aol.com), July 05, 2001.

I go along with the bleach bath. When I was a kid at home we would pick huckleberries and black berries and as soon as we got home we would take a bleach water bath.

-- Russell Hays (rhays@sstelco.com), July 05, 2001.

Chiggers are something I DON'T miss from living in Ohio. I lived near Dayton for 6 years, went camping every summer in Indiana, and had a big garden at my mother-in-law's place near Dayton. Got covered with them every weekend during the chigger season, went through bottles of chigger-rid. Glad that Ontario is chigger free.

Something I learned a few years ago is that taking 100 mg tablets of vitamin B1 discourages a number of insects, works like a charm on the blackflies that swarm up here for a couple weeks every spring. I just take a tablet a day about 2 weeks before blackfly season and on through til they disappear, hardly get a bite. Doesn't seem to work on mosquitoes, though. Couple of ladies I talked to who were teaching in Africa said that vitamin B3 discourages mosquitoes, hasn't helped me, but they swore by it. (Be careful with B3, it's a vaso-dilater, dilates the blood vessels, if you take more than 50 mg you can get a tingly hot rush through your body that can feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, I keep B3 on hand, when I feel a migraine coming on, take about 100 mg, it knocks the sharp pain down enough that after an hour aspirin or advil will make it bearable.)

I've never tried the B1 on ticks or chiggers, no chiggers and very ticks in our area, but I had first read of it in an article in a hunting magazine, supposed to work on ticks as well as blackflies.

-Chelsea

-- Chelsea (rmbehr@istar.ca), July 06, 2001.

We have never had a problem with chiggers while living in either Maryland or Ohio. I was beginning to think they were just in the south (we use to live in Oklahoma and always had a problem) until I read the above. Hmm.

-- Terry - NW Ohio (aunt_tm@hotmail.com), July 06, 2001.

We don't have chiggers up here but sure did in VA where I grew up. We put clear fingernail polish over the bites. I quess it smothered them because it usually stopped the itching.

-- Cindy in NY (cjpopeck@worldnet.att.net), July 07, 2001.

OK. Dumb question alert. Whats a chigger? Don't think we have them here in Nova Scotia because I have never heard of them around here.

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), July 11, 2001.