Ants in my SFG

janetgouvas 5/2/2010, 11:52 am

I know I have seen a post somewhere about ants but can't find it. So now I have ants. Will they harm the plants? Will Ladybugs eat them? Should I just ignore them?

Janet
Surprise, Az.

nancy 5/4/2010, 11:00 am

Janet - I came looking for the same information this morning. There are several threads that mention ants and all of them have great ideas. Tonite I'm going to sprinke cornmeal around some of my boxes and coffee grounds in others. I have ants in every box! I don't know if they will actually harm my food.

I haven't yet taken the time to figure out how to post a link to another thread, but if you put "ants" in the search box, it will show you the other posts.

Good luck & keep us posted on how you get rid of them!

janetgouvas 5/5/2010, 9:33 am

We have a lot of ants in the desert. A couple years ago I had a lot of them and wanted to try the cornmeal. They ate it up and kept on coming. I also tried grits and they liked that even better. I ended up just feeding the ants and called the pest control people. I just don't want to go the poisen route if I don't have to. The only damage I see to any of my plants, so far, is a couple of little holes in my eggplant leaves. Time to call out the Lady Bug Patrol. Ants in my SFG Icon_biggrin

Janet

nancy 5/7/2010, 9:18 am

Update: I saw fewer ants in the squares where I put the coffee grounds than I did where I put the cornmeal. So last night I added more grounds and will save more from work today. Hopefully all of my plants like coffee grounds! Ants in my SFG Icon_smile

janetgouvas 5/7/2010, 11:11 am

Cool! I have coffee grounds and will mix some in today. Thanks.

Janet
Surprise, Az.

martha 5/7/2010, 11:27 am

Coffee grounds make great compost. I can't imagine they would hurt anything by being put directly on the soil.

(Unless, of course, it is late in the day, and it keeps the plants awake. Ants in my SFG Icon_lol

)

Megan 5/7/2010, 5:50 pm

Starbucks gave me a big sack of coffee grounds and I spread it directly. Have to tell you, though... my ants seem completely undeterred by it. I have spied a small hole they have started, I've rubbed it out a few times and they just build it back. Is this really something I should worry about, though?? Don't the tunnels aerate the soil and so forth?

ASFx 5/8/2010, 9:36 pm

I had an ant problem about a year ago, and i bought some stuff called Torro liquid ant killer. It's not organic, but as long as you don't put it in your beds or neat the edge of your beds, it's perfectly fine. Its just a small bottle of the liquid, and it comes with little cardboard tabs. You pull apart the tabs, and just put the drops on the tabs and lay them around near the ant path. The ants will immediately run to it and begin eating. I used this stuff, and the entire ant colony was gone literally the very next day. Nothing else worked for me.

janetgouvas 5/9/2010, 10:09 am

Once again, thank you! We have a lot of ants in the yard and they are a big problem this year.

Jnaet

schristi69 6/4/2010, 4:45 pm

http://www.getipm.com/thebestcontrol/bugstop/control_ant.htm

Little Thumb 6/4/2010, 4:56 pm

janetgouvas wrote:Once again, thank you! We have a lot of ants in the yard and they are a big problem this year.

Jnaet

My friend uses diotomacious earth, works great for ants and bugs. It won't hurt you but it will kill the ants. YOu can sprinkle it on your garden as well.

Little Thumb

luvs2garden 6/4/2010, 7:54 pm

I have an ongoing problem with ants. I use Diatomaceous earth as well as Nematodes. I purchase the nematodes from Arbico organics.

http://www.arbico-organics.com/
Buy your DE at a feed store. It's much cheaper then those little bags from the hardware store. Make sure you get food grade!

Good Luck.

extremesoccermom 6/4/2010, 8:02 pm

We have problem with ants in the house every year. The best thing we have found is cinnamon. I buy the bulk container from Sams every year. Just sprinkle it around the box (or in our case where we see the cracks and door sills). Laughing

ander217 6/4/2010, 9:54 pm

I've never worried about ants in the garden - I haven't seen any damage they've done, and I figure anything that might help pollinate can't be all bad. When I get them in the house I use Terro. (It sounds very similar to Torro mentioned in another post.) It's the best thing I've found for sweet ants.

milaneyjane 6/4/2010, 10:19 pm

Like Ander, the ants have never done any damage to my gardens and we have TONS of ants in it.

luvs2garden 6/4/2010, 11:46 pm

Wow, I envy the people who don't have a problem with ants. They are so invasive and their bites are painful! They are sneaky little buggers! Before you know it they are all over and biting the crap out of you! I'll go for the organic way of getting rid of them.

ander217 6/5/2010, 8:27 am

Our ants must be different from yours. Ours are small and they don't bite. Ouch! No wonder you want to get rid of them.

Megan 6/5/2010, 8:34 am

Same here. Ants are all over my garden, but they don't bite me, and don't seem to be hurting anything. They DO swarm over already-bruised strawberries, for which I suppose I can't blame them.

AliSmith13 6/5/2010, 9:09 am

I have noticed many ants in my bed also and have wondered if they can hurt anything. Can they? I have left them alone thus far, but if they can harm my plants I would definitely want them GONE! Smile

janetgouvas 6/5/2010, 9:58 am

I am still having a problem with ants and they are definately doing some damage to my plants. I had to replace a lot of my plants recently because of the disaster I mentioned before. It did give me the need to get into the dirt and I found lots more ants than I knew were there. So I tried cinnamon with limited results. Have been using coffee grounds religiously (love that) and went looking for TORRO but found TERRO. I am using that this morning.

My take on it is, there are so many different types of ants that some will concentrate on a nice easy garden and some will go for the house. Here in the desert I see 3 different kinds just in my yard alone.

Diotomacious Earth Ants in my SFG Icon_exclaim

Well Duh

I used to use that in my garden in Ohio and I forgot all about it. Going to get some becasuse I know it works on everything else, so why not ants? Ants in my SFG Icon_biggrin

janetgouvas 11/20/2010, 2:13 pm

I just read the most simple solution to getting rid of ants. I can't believe I never thought of this myself!

Pour 1 gal. boiling water over the top of the ant hill. Immediately push a stick (about 1" in diameter) into the center of the hill, pull it out and pour a second gal. of boiling water with 1 cup of bleach added, straight down the whole and over the top of the hill.

The boiling water will immediately kill many of the ants, the chlorine in the bleach will contaminate the stored food and destroy their sense of smell. The remaining ants will abondon the nest and eggs. It will take some time for them to build a new nest, gather food and lay eggs again. They probably won't go far but it would be fairly easy to find the new nest and repeat the treatment if you need to. You can never totally eliminate them but at least you can control them.

I am going to try this. Whatever else, it sure can't hurt.

Megan 11/20/2010, 2:31 pm

I didn't have bottoms on my beds this year, and I wouldn't want bleach anywhere near my plants.... but if the anthill is not IN your SFG and there's no chance of the bleach leaching into your box, it might just work!

I used DE and also borax/sugar water traps. They both worked, a little.... I suspect I wasn't aggressive enough with the DE. The borax did trap ants, but it was even better on slugs. I remained very "ant-y" all year but I don't think I had much damage from them. Guess I was lucky.

janetgouvas 11/21/2010, 9:12 am

You wouldn't have to use the bleach. That was just an option. Maybe that would be better in just the yard or around the house, generally. But the boiling water treatment makes sense to me.

duhh 11/22/2010, 2:04 am

I have seen some ants in our garden, but not many. They don't seem to be doing any damage, but I know they can! Thanks for the info and I'll keep an eye of my ants. The ants here can be mean little buggers!

janetgouvas 11/22/2010, 9:34 am

I know about those nasty little buggers too! We have several kinds of ants in our area. I would advise you (if you try this method) to pull the stick out quickly and pour in the second gallon of boiling water without hesitation. Don't give them time to get to you.

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