Two roaches, two wars
The palmetto bug — the American cockroach, sometimes the smokybrown — lives outdoors in palmettos, mulch, and sewer lines, and wanders in through gaps, drains, and the occasional dramatic flight. Finding one doesn’t mean your house is dirty; it means the perimeter has a door open. The German cockroach is a different universe: small, fast-breeding, and living full-time inside your kitchen. One is a keep-out problem. The other is an eviction. The full breakdown is on the blog.
German roaches: the honest playbook
German roaches breed too fast for sprays to win — a single female’s egg case carries dozens, and the population hides inside appliances, hinges, and wall voids. The winning strategy is bait: slow-acting, carried back to the harborage, shared through the colony. It takes days to weeks, it requires keeping counters clean and competing food sealed, and it works — where foggers and contact sprays reliably make things worse by scattering the population deeper.
Palmetto bugs: the keep-out plan
For the big species, treatment focuses outside-in: a treated perimeter, entry points sealed or flagged, harborage like thick mulch and leaf litter addressed, and drain-and-sewer entry routes identified. After that, the occasional wanderer is the exception, not the weekly heart attack. Homes near the marsh, mature landscaping, or older sewer laterals get the tailored version of this plan — the pressure there is simply higher.