ANTS!!!

I have paid the professionals to come out and put out stuff to kill the ants (cost me $300)...this was 1 1/2 yrs. ago. Since then, I've treated the yard myself at least a dozen or more times. Now granted, when I bought this place...the ants had taken over. There were probably 50 some ant hills over an acre. I spotted six today and I am just so sad. I've gotten so excited about growing my new garden but shouldn't I be worried? I mean, I can't till up the garden space with an anthill on it...it will send them flying everywhere!
Someone please tell me the magic secret....please, please. I've also sprinkled baking soda on a hill, then poured white vinegar all over it and it worked but it also turned my grass yellow and now this year it is a bare spot.
Any clues, you guys?
Pinger

I was gonna say coffee but my dad says that he doesn't think that was killing them, just running them off to another spot. We have them real bad here too but can't kill them. If you want to keep them out of the house, sprinkle the grounds against the foundation. They won't go past them.

Pinger...darn ants...I had terrible flying ants a couple of years back. Sounds like a lot of work, but try scalding hot water. You didn't mention what kind of ants. If they are the big black ants, check for any kind of rotting wood. They sell ant bait on the internet - I believe it's called Ant Gourmet. If you don't get the queen, the ants will just keep moving around. The Ant gourmet food is there for the soldiers to take back to the nests and hopefully kill the queen. The queen is a big ant. Ants also are attracted to water. Do you have ground pests digging up your land to eat the ants? Good luck!

LAINIMOO...the ants are very tiny...might be fire ants. Not in my yard, but in a neighbors...I saw one mound that had to be near 2 feet high!
No rotting wood and no ground pests and no "excess" water....hmmm.
I do understand the concept though of the worker ants taking the "kill" back to the nasty Queen...I just don't know what to do. What if they start popping in my garden?

We have been trying for YEARS to kill them here with no sucess. We have more luck with moles than ants and moles are hard to catch!

i once tried the coffee grounds... didnt work.
Though i have use dish soap and water.... that will kill just about any insect.

I have ants also at my place. I mix half and half water and bleach. Just don't do this near your flowers or plants. It does kill some of the ants. I've gotten stung SO many times that I finally listened to an :old wise person: what to do for my stings. Now, DON'T laugh because it does help very much...if you get stung rub Prep H on the bite, it makes that awful swellign and itching calm down and speeds the healing. I know your thinking..omg hemmoroid ointment! I did too..until I tried it. Trust me on this one. Also on the ant hills..If you have left over rice or peelings from peeling potatoes...put them on the hills..ants can't digest starch. Good luck from Arkansas!

My sister in florida chases them around her yard. When they pop up she puts Amdro on the hill and that goes away. I think you could live with them with minimal loss to your garden, but not eliminat them completely.

I have found that improving the soil in the garden discourages the fire-ants. It does not completely eliminate them, however, so they camp just outside the garden area - ARRGGHHH! (to copy a line from Charlie Brown).

Usually, by the time I see one or feel it crawling on me, it is too late. I'm not sure anything will ever eradicate them. We just seem to move them around. If I get them out of the yard, they are in the neighboors yard or on the county land behind our property. So it is a perpetual struggle.

Try Jerry baker recipes if you don't like chemcals. One of his secrets is to soak cigarettes in water to make nicotine soup. Nicotine has a LD50 of 1. If this means nothing to you I will explain. LD is lethal dosage. It is the number of milligrams per kilogram of body weight it takes to kill a test rabbit. (not my idea, so don't blame me for bunnyside) Anyways, The LD50 of insecticidal soap for example is 10,000. So nicotine...Very Toxic.
Check out this site. He also recommends grits, because they expand after eaten, and POOF, ant dust!
http://www.jerrybaker.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=2#bugs

WOW...thanks for all the advice...I'm trying a little of everything and will let you guys know which ones worked and which ones didn't.
So far, I've tried boiling water and the dish soap.
I'll check back in tomorrow.
Pinger

The grits definately do not work...
The boiling water kills on contact but not all of them...
Trying the nicotine, bleach and soapy water next...
Pinger

Keep on trying. I am waiting on it to warm up and seeing what works for you. The only thing I have really seen work is peonies next to the house. They are more interested in them than the house. But I still want to get rid of most of them. Have more of them than moles.

What ever you do, don't mix up the nicotea with your iced tea!!! LOL YUCK!!!

LOL...funny MOMO.

The nicotine tea did not work for me...oh well. I put some water/bleach on two hills and water/soap on two others. I will check back in, in a few days.
By the way, I have been pouring boiling water on the first attempts of the other remedies that did not work and I haven't seen any new ants. Don't know if it's the water or the combo...but thinking it's the boiling water.
Ping

I KNOW, I KNOW. Now please don't laugh. This really works, is cheap, and is so non toxic, you can eat it.
Sprinkle NutraSweet around the ant hills, then lightly mist with water. It HAS to be NutraSweet, or a generic that has Aspartame as it's ingredient. It was originally manufactured as an insect poison.
blpender

>>It was originally manufactured as an insect poison.

wow, how scary is that!! that is is a sweetener for human consumption.

We will try that and let you know how it works.

Yes, please do. I was skeptical when I first read it as well. I had some plants I wanted to put in, and ants had invaded that part of my bed. I sprinkled just 2 packets of the stuff around, misted it lightly. The next morning, there was NOT ONE SINGLE ANT.
My kennel is an attached to my house, used to be a garage. Sometimes in early spring, I get those tiny little black ants that come in from the tiny cracks where the floor meets the walls. Every time I see them, I use the nutra sweet treatment, right at the crack line, mist it with water, and voila, no more ants.
blpender

Excellent!
Can't wait to try it....

When I was living in Alabama last year, I would treat the entire yard with Amdro. It's a little costly, but it should last all season. The fire ant there are HORRIBLE! I would put it down in April, and never saw another mound until about August, and even then it was only 1 or 2, it was then easy to sprinkle the amdro around the pile. Always did the trick for me. Good luck!

Aspartame was NOT invented as an ANT Poison, that is an urban legend. The website snopes.com is the one to check to see if anything you are told that seems to be unbelievable is bogus. Here's a link for the aspartame/ant poison story:
http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/antpoison.asp

Update...

Water and soap...no effect.
NutaSweet...no effect.

I'm going back to the boiling water.
Wouldn't it be great to come up with something that you could pour, like a liquid (that ants were attracted to) down in the holes and then so many minutes later, it would harden...and trap the ants within it?
Somebody that has time, work on it...and I get half the profits!

I am also plagued with ants on my 5 acres. Argentine ants absolutely everywhere. Pull up a weed... ants. Dig a hole... ants. Water the hedge... ants. I only care about keeping them out of my house (hardest in winter when it's cold and summer when it's dry) and out of my veggie garden.

Last year, I bought one of these bait stations http://www.kmantpro.com/ and the raised bed it was in had no ants at all. I bought 4 more this year, to keep the ants out of the whole veggie path I hope. I'll give a report later in the year to let you know how they worked, because they weren't cheap.

Please do let us know how they work.

UNCLE!!!!
I give up... Some died, some moved....and more are popping up.
I'm going back to my original thought and experiment...baking soda and vinegar. Sprinkle baking soda all over the mound, pour on the vinegar and watch it fizz (fun part) then add vinegar one or two more times. Kills the ants, not sure why...but also kills everything else too. I've got about 6 round bare spots where I did it last year.

Good luck to everyone else and pass on the trials and tribulations, please.
Pinger

PLEASE.... Don't try any of Jerry Baker's ... ANYTHING!!!!
He's the worst thing to happen to Organic Gardening since JI Rodale first brought it to this country! The nicotine mix w/ kill your beneficials! The grits is a myth. The guy's a quack & a rich one too!
http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2006/06/jerry_baker_ame_1.html
" he's been universally condemned by plant scientists, who say his advice "ranges from the wacky to the downright dangerous." For example, the nicotine in chewing tobacco juice is a lethal pesticide, far more dangerous than what most of us buy in the stores. State and federal agricultural agents have objected to his use of the name "America's Master Gardener" - well, I should hope so."

My yard has been organic for over 45 yrs. My mother battled w/ ants non-organiclly & never won. I took the yard over 5 yrs ago & have nearly gotten them licked. My secret? Boric Acid. Mix it w/ sugar. If it's liquid & strong (50/50) the worker w/ eat it & it'll kill her. If it's weaker (still better if it's liquid, worker can carry more) worker w/ take it home to feed it to the Queen & babies. I bought tiny containers w/ snap on lids, then used a hot nail to put a hole in it. Fill it up w/ the syrup & set it in the yard. It's better to put it in the shade, that way it doesn't evaporate so quickly. I use the 50/50 mix close to the house & the weaker mix farther away. I also start watering at the house & work my way out. I figure that way I'm chasing them away from the house, not toward it's nice, dry interior.
This yard has had big ant problems for 50 yrs, because they were never handled properly. In just 5 yrs, I've nearly gotten the eradicted. My neighbors still have them big time, because they still use chems & their soil is dead. Because of that, I'll be fighting them 'forever'. But... I can keep them at bey & keep their numbers down.

allmuxedup...

I've been hearing the same thing from quite a few others about Mr. Baker. Thanks for your input.
Where can I buy Boric Acid? I'm willing to do anything to get rid of these ants and I don't care how long it takes. It's become personal now....me or the ants!
I found three new mounds this morning, all within a foot of my lasagna bed...ARRGGGHHHHH!!!
Thanks allmuxedup,
Pinger

Pinger~ do you have a young son or a boy pumpkin nearby? When we visited my folks, my boy pumpkin took a shovefull of ants from one ant hill and dumped them on another ant hill, then watched them fight to the death. And repeated the process for their ant hills in the backyard . GOT RID of all the ants. He said it was on Animal Planet. Sooooo..we tried it here, the boy pumpkin was eliminating ant hills for a neighbor as well. ..No ant hills last year, and it may be a bit too early for this year, but of course of we see any ..will send the Boy Pumpkin Ant Eliminator out!

Boric acid can be found at any drugstore.

Good idea for the "ant wars".

No children garden...just me.
And what the heck is a boy pumpkin? Is a girl pumpkin any different?

Sounds like interesting approach with the ants and actually makes since. But I think I'll try the Boric Acid first...

PS Do you have any seeds of this 'boy pumpkin'?

Pinger~LOL! NO pumpkins (children) are all adorable and lovable and each have their own personalities, talents and weaknesses. Just that my boy pumpkin will cross into territories and engage in activities that my girly pumpkins would screamand run away at the thought ... Just the other day, he helped create a contraption out of insect screen weighted down by a huge rock to prevent the black snake from reentering his/her hole near our patio,..another scene from Animal Planet or Discovery channel I'm sure. Even some of his friends stand back, just to observe. Sorry, don't have any seeds for this boy pumpkin..but I've been known to lend him out, for a burger and shakes, to neighbors and friends!

Just my two cents-- Boric acid does work. For indoors we have a product called terro, boric acid and other stuff in a sticky liquid. Small bottle about $3 at walmart in the pesticide section. In the house you put it on cardboard, although I put it on a can lid or something it won't leak through and set it on the counter- do not disturb the ants, they will drink it up and take it home to feed their queen so let them.After a few days, no ants. Be careful if you have pets, put it out of their range.

I second lisaoliver's remedy. I have cats, so I have to be careful where I put it.
The product I'm using is called "Roach Prufe." I got it from Ace hardware.
I really think ants are cool, but not in my house! (They can enjoy my Peonies all they like.)

Marsha.

Roach Prufe is mostly Boric Acid. You don't need the pharm grade, it's what I used to get before I found Roach Prufe. Tehre are other BA based insect remidies, look in the chem isle of the store, if you can stand the smell.
Try ot keep it in a paste/liquid form. That's what they eat. If it gets too hard, they won't touch it. You can also get it in the squirt bottle (looks like a really big ketchup bottle.) you 'squirt' it out & it kinda comes out in a cloud. you don't need much, just a dusting in their path. Like w/ roaches, it'll get on them & get in their joints. Or they'll clean themselves & it'll take out their stomach.
There's no need to spend all that $$ on chems & cause your children to get sick. You can stay w/ Organics & everybody can be happy & healthy. I'd go to the OG fourm on this site, there's a lot I could contribute. But... I'm not going to pay for accesss. I can go hang out on any number of Organic boards for free. Pay a subscription fee to help other subscribers... doesn't make sense to me. But if you have a problem & would like some help, I'm on the OrganicGardening dot com boards.

Hey allmuxedup...I got some Boric Acid today...but I have the powered kind.
What do I do or add? And this is strictly for outside use.
Thanks for all the help and suggestions everyone! And keeping fingers crossed this works :)
Pinger

Does anyone know what I should do or add to my powdered Boric Acid? Or should I just sprinkle it on the ant mounds?

Anyone? You guys out there?
Do I just sprinkle it on the mounds? Mix with water first? Add sugar? Dance on one foot, holding my nose while chanting, "Dead ant, Dead ant, Dead ant"?
Your help would be greatly appreciated!
And no...pictures will not be taken of Ant Dance, so don't even ask...

Heehehee! The video of the ANT Dance would be entertaining though!

Sorry, haven't even checked my e-mail lately! yes, just sprinkle. Although I have found that saying things like" ha, ha you nasty little creatures, take this home to your queen!" makes me feel better.