Florida Green Pest Control has a solution for almost every bug issue. The company’s organic cedar-oil-based solution is strong enough to rid a home of termites; protect dogs and horses from fleas, mites and ticks; and eliminate infestations of mosquitoes and bedbugs.
Yet the unique product is safe enough for almost all uses, including organic gardening.
If you are a mosquito magnet, then the woodsy spray brought to Wellington from Texas by partners Dale Perry, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Carter Askew is the solution to your problems.
“I decided that I was going to try to put together a plan for everything organic, and that’s how we came to starting up Florida Green Pest Control,” explained Perry, the company’s chief operations officer.
Perry heard of the product four years ago and brought it to the attention of his nephew, Askew, and his son-in-law, Saltalamacchia.
“The three of us sat down and talked, and this is what we decided to do,” said Perry, who has been in the agricultural industry for more than 40 years. “We think it’s a good idea simply because it is organic, good for the environment and safe. That’s our purpose.”
The company is also a present and future plan for Saltalamacchia, a Royal Palm Beach High School graduate. Out of high school, Saltalamacchia signed to play baseball with Florida State University. That led to a professional baseball career that has seen him play catcher for the Atlanta Braves, the Texas Rangers and the Boston Red Sox, before returning home to catch for the Miami Marlins.
“Being able to play baseball back at home again has given me this opportunity to be able to start this business,” he explained.
As the father of three children, he is also interested in safety and is proud of the company’s focus on safe, 100 percent organic products.
“Baseball doesn’t last forever. You have to do something after baseball,” he said, noting that Florida Green Pest Control provides the perfect opportunity for a post-baseball career with a family focus.
“We wanted this to be a family business, something that we can do together, something that Dale is familiar with, and I’m getting familiar with,” Saltalamacchia said. “This is something that I can definitely see myself doing after baseball.”
With both Perry and Saltalamacchia living close by, they are familiar with the creatures that call South Florida home. Between issues with white flies, mosquitoes and insects that gravitate toward horses, the products sold by Florida Green Pest Control are essential to the area and have a wide variety of applications.
“It’s also good for the horse industry, because it has products that you can spray right on the animals,” Perry said. “They’re 100 percent safe, whether it’s a horse, a cow, a dog or whatever type of animal it may be. It keeps the flies, the mosquitoes and the bad insects off of them.”
The base for the product is red cedar oil. The variety that the company uses only grows in South Texas. There are other cedar trees and other cedar products available, but the family chose this particular variety and company to represent as a distributor because of its reputation.
The product even discourages snakes from creating nests in yards. “Snakes do not like the cedar smell, so they might wander over to your neighbor’s yard, but they won’t be in your yard,” Perry said, explaining the effectiveness of the red cedar granules that can be sprinkled around a yard just like fertilizer.
Spritzers of 1 ounce, 2.5 ounces and 4 ounces, which kids can even bring with them to school, offer a portable formula that humans can use as an organic bug repellent.
Available for personal and professional use, Florida Green Pest Control carries products ranging from individual spritz bottles and 10-pound bags of granules to pet shampoo and gallons of concentrated solution in tanks that are hooked up to lawn sprinkler systems. Some formulations also act as a wood and deck sealer.
Saltalamacchia is excited about the spray tanks and can’t wait to install his own.
“Mosquitoes out here are huge right now, with the equestrian world, with everyone who has dogs,” he said. “We’re across the street from sugar cane, and we get all kinds of insects, snakes, bugs and mosquitoes, so we’re putting one of these in our house.”
In addition to using it at his own home, Saltalamacchia has brought it to his parents to use on their dogs in The Acreage, where they’ve noticed a striking transformation, he said.
Keeping horses free of bugs can be a difficult task to tackle, unless you are using specific products.
“This you can spray right into horse stalls. You can spray it on their food, as a matter of fact, because it’s organic, not toxic at all,” Perry said. “As far as the stalls, you can spray it right around their bedding, where they feed and where they wash down.”
It is even safe to put on horse coats.
“Where they exercise, in their exercise pools, you can pour this right into their water,” Perry said. “When they swim in it, it coats to their coat, and when they get out, mosquitoes and flies won’t bother them.”
Florida Green Pest Control is located at 3031 Fortune Way, Suite A-11, in Wellington. For more info., call (561) 790-3939 or visit www.floridagreenpestcontrol.com.
ABOVE: Dale Perry and Jarrod Saltalamacchia of Florida Green Pest Control.
