This Household Use For Cucumber Peels May Surprise You

Cucumbers are delicious to eat and good for you. These green, crunchy fruits that we treat more like a vegetable are great for salads and sandwiches. And they are clearly loved in the United States. Per Statista, in 2019 we gobbled up an average 8 lbs of cucumbers per person. How could we not? According to Healthline, these babies are chockful of nutrients and antioxidants that will help keep your body healthy. Not to mention they are low in calories, making them a great snack. But there is more to the cucumber than meets the eye. Long before there were grocery stores and chemical products to help with both cleaning and primping, society relied on natural methods for getting rid of pests, aiding in their beauty maintenance, removing stains, and treating common ailments.

According to University of Missouri, everyone from the Egyptians and Romans, to Charlemagne and Henry VIII grew and used cucumbers for what would become multiple purposes. In the 17th century, it was discovered that they might help bring down a fever, and as a result, the phrase "cool as a cucumber" was coined. Today, we know that the mighty cucumber offers consumers a great many solutions for several common household, beauty, and health-related issues, one of which involves the cucumber peels and their use may surprise you.  

Per Hunker, cucumber peels can help keep ants at bay in your kitchen. First, ants coming into your home is a common problem, so no shame, but it is definitely one that needs a little attention. Hunker shares that the cucumber peel is the "most bitter" part of the fruit and its fragrance deters those pesky ants that go marching 2-by-2 from coming into your house. You simply rub the inside of the peel on areas that the ants have been inhabiting and then place the peel at the point of entry, be it a hole in the wall, under a door, or some crevice the ants use to get into your kitchen. Who knew cucumbers could be so helpful to rid your home of this nuisance? 

Why does it work? Rentokil explains that cucumber peels are packed with a substance that destroys a particular fungi which ants are partial to. The Stack Exchange reveals that this substance is called trans-2-nonenal and it is also used in insecticides. However, the Rentokil cautions that this natural means of getting rid of ants is not the enduring, be-all, end-all solution to your ant problem. It's more of a band-aid, actually. Once you remove the cucumber, the ants will return. The site notes that the first step is getting rid of the food source that is attracting the ants to your home in the first place.