Chasing ants away
Return to DiscussionsDoes anyone have a few ideas for making ants leave your garden? I use 4'X4' garden squares to grow peppers, tomatoes, greens & onions...the ants like the area. I use concrete blocks to separate the raised beds and ants build their 'nest' along the boundary. They've made about 1/3rd of one square difficult to work. Any suggestions?
Ant bait crumbs, they carry it into the nest for food and it sterilizes the queen. Borax is supposed to be an anti ant product, but too much near a garden may overdo the mineral for the plants. Otherwise steam them out, with a high pressure boiling water machine, and a steamer probe to push down in the middle of the hill. I have fire ants, they moved in a few years ago, and for other reasons I built a boiler on a truck, an old whim that I wanted to have a truck that would chug around on firewood. also got a steam hose for it. All I need is the probe to screw on the end of it and I will be ant god and subject them to ant hell for being so nasty.
I feel ya. At my place in the Caribbean, the fire ants are so good at hiding their nests, the first I know the nest is there is when they are swarming me. I've adopted a policy of management rather than elimination; if I'm working, and they swarm me, that spot gets the ant powder. But everywhere I'm not working, they can have. It works in that the spot where I applied the powder goes ant free long enough for me to finish the task.