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Post by daylilydude on May 25, 2018 7:06:27 GMT -5
I noticed that there are some ant condos out in my yard this go round... they are huge  do you have any special ways of getting rid of them... running over with the riding mower just makes them move and it doesn't take long and it's another huge ant hill? |
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Post by guruofgardens on May 25, 2018 7:26:06 GMT -5
Don’t know if it will help, but ants don’t like cinnamon.
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on May 25, 2018 7:28:43 GMT -5
Are they fire ants?
if so, you will spend a small fortune chasing them.
Mom had bought all all kinds of stuff over the years. Amdro, In & Out, Grits, all kinds of dry and liquids, etc. I can't even remember all the stuff she has tried. You get rid of one mound and another pops up. After a rain they are everywhere. All you can do is try to keep them manageable.
Boiling water works about as well as anything we have bought
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Post by hairymooseknuckles on May 25, 2018 7:41:04 GMT -5
One more thing, they don't like having their mound disturbed. You can take a rake or hoe to the mound a couple of times a day and they will move to another spot too.
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Post by brownrexx on May 25, 2018 7:57:53 GMT -5
I don't know what kind of ants you have there. We don't have fire ants here and the type of small black ants that I see in the yard or garden don't really seem to hurt anything. As far as I am concerned, they aerate the soil, eat aphids and are generally good guys. Any ant hills that I have seen in my yard are only an inch or two tall and not an issue for me. I just consider them to be part of nature.
Now carpenter ants that invade houses and chew wood are very destructive and can't be allowed so I eliminate those with pesticide.
Can you identify what type of ants you are dealing with?
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Post by meandtk on May 25, 2018 8:56:49 GMT -5
Any relative of ants can be virtually eliminated by pouring molasses near or on their mounds as you find them. A fungus grows on the sugars and kills the lil critters. Just be aware that you wouldn't want this fungus indoors.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 25, 2018 10:58:25 GMT -5
I am lucky in that for the last several years I have not had fire ants in my yard. I have other kinds of ants, usually red ones, but sometimes black ones. They are not aggressive; I see them crawling on me from time to time when I am working in the garden and they rarely sting. And their stings are not very painful. Most of the time don't do any harm to the plants, other than some aphid farming.
The worst thing they do is sometimes they will make a really big nest in a pot or raised bed and their tunnels will be so extensive that they kill plants or keep plants from growing in that container/spot. Those colonies I encourage to move elsewhere. Flooding their nest repeatedly usually works.
Other than that, I live and let live. As the phrase goes, "nature abhors a vacuum" - there are always going to be ants in a garden! I figure that a thriving population of ants in the garden will discourage other ants from moving in. New ants might be more unpleasant to deal with.
However, I know that a large colony of fire ants moves in, they'll kill off my good ants. Fire ants in the garden is NO fun. I'd go to war with those guys.
Living in a subdivision full of lawn-obsessed people who would never put up with ant mounds marring their green perfection has some benefit, I guess. Any fire ants that enter the area are promptly attacked. When I walk in the neighborhood I occasionally see a healthy ant mound, but within a few days I will see ant bait on it and within a week it's gone.
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Post by spike on May 25, 2018 14:07:13 GMT -5
Got a couple good sized mounds out by the tree line. As long as they stay back there we are fine.
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 25, 2018 17:12:28 GMT -5
Fortunately, fire ants aren't found in this area. The mounds of small ants appear occasionally, but the ones that I watch for closely are the ones that farm aphids, on plants - especially okra and peppers. They seem to be larger than the ones that are in the mounds, but if I see them crawling on or around the plants, there are almost always aphids somewhere. Once I get rid of them, I put some tangle foot around the base of any plants in the area (I put this on okra as soon as they get fairly large, as they seem to be ant/aphid magnets in this area), and make sure that the leaves aren't touching somewhere that the ants could use as a bridge, to get on the plants.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 27, 2018 0:58:27 GMT -5
Oh, yeah. Ants love to farm aphids on okra. On long beans, too!
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Post by pepperhead212 on May 28, 2018 0:01:17 GMT -5
Never had them on long beans...that I know of! But I'll watch for them now.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 28, 2018 22:58:11 GMT -5
Really? I always have lots of aphids on long beans, and ants farming them, too. Usually the aphids will be really concentrated on a few pods but there will be few to none on most of the pods, so most of the pods are undamaged.
It's become habit to flick the pods a few times before picking them to get the ants to scurry off so I can pick without getting stung.
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Post by bestofour on May 29, 2018 16:13:56 GMT -5
We have lots of fire ants and that's why we have Terminix visit once in a while.
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do you have any special ways of getting rid of them... running over with the riding mower just makes them move and it doesn't take long and it's another huge ant hill?
