Home, and Scott is working on the cupboards. Woo hoo!
The ants, which apparently had a little nest under the kitchen cupboard, discovered my ant annihilator: Borax and sugar. It takes a day or two, but once they've filled up on this concoction and taken it back to their nest, it's usually the last you see of them. I asked Scott how many were still alive when he ripped the cupboard apart. Just a few, he said.
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| They are gone and so is this cupboard. |
Unfortunately some tiny red ants in the pots on my deck are doing all too well. My attempts at poisoning them without poisoning anything else haven't worked. The cornmeal sprinkled on top of the soil hasn't done the trick either. I like to think these methods decimated their numbers, and maybe it's true, but there's a ways to go.
What next? Do they make an Uzi for this?
Keep in mind this is an organic farm. No fooling around; no Roundup or chemical spray.
This is for fire ants, but it might work for other types of ants as well. I haven't tried it though, so it is a "theoretical suggestion", only worth the paper it is written on. When you find something that does work I hope you post it!
ReplyDelete"If you have just one or two fire ant mounds in your garden or landscape and not a widespread problem, you can do a couple of things. The simplest is to pour 3 gallons of very hot water directly onto the ant mound. This method achieves only about 60 percent control, so you’ll likely have to repeat applications often. Be careful not to splash the surrounding plants or yourself.
For an even more effective way to get rid of fire ants, drench the mounds with a citrus oil and soap solution, a combination that’s repeatedly proved effective. In controlled studies conducted by Texas A&M University entomologists, fire ant mounds still showed no activity nearly a month after the researchers had drenched the mounds with a mixture of 1 1⁄2 ounces of Medina Orange Oil, 3 ounces of Dawn liquid soap and 1 gallon of water. A compound in citrus oil, d-limonene, breaks down the ants’ exoskeletons and causes them to suffocate. The commercial product Orange Guard Fire Ant Killer — approved for use in organic agriculture by the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) — also contains orange oil. (For other approved products, check the OMRI website.)"
http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/get-rid-of-fire-ants-zb0z1307zsor.aspx