ANTS!!!

[nachoqtpie]

So... since we live in the south... we have the wonderful fire ants to contend with. Apparently they have decided that our side yard/garden looks like a very nice place to set up camp!

So, 1, will they hurt anything (other than us...) being in the garden? And 2, how do I get rid of them???

 

[thistlebloom]

I've never dealt with fire ants Nacho', but you can pour boiling water on their nest sites and kill regular ants. Don't know why it wouldn't work for yours. You can also sprinkle DE (diatomaceous earth) on them. Both treatments would likely have to be repeated several times.

 

[nachoqtpie]

Some of the ants are right next to our plants. Won't pouring boiling water on them hurt the plant?

 

[thistlebloom]

Yep. I'd try the DE on them, and use hot water on the ones away from your plants.

 

[riverman]

And the boiling hot water will kill beneficial microbes in the soil I've read. I live in Texas, and fire ants are just as common as the dirt they live in. The best thing I've found to use that has the smallest effect on my plants and soil is Manure Tea. I make a big bucket of chicken poop tea, then pour a couple ounces in a gallon of water along with garlic juice(stick a couple of garlic bulbs in the food processor and strain the pulp), orange oil, and if you have it a little molasses. And dump that all over the mound.

If they are really hardy and that's not doing much and they are not too close to any plants then I'll dump straight manure tea on them. Then sprinkle DE all over the surface. The DE will only get the ants above ground, and even then seems to barely do anything when you have those beast fire ants in your yard.

Fire ants will bore out dirt around root systems and create a colony in place sometimes, thats the biggest problem I've had.

Besides applying beneficial nematodes in my raised beds, which has seemed to keep the number of ants down a bit, I've pretty much just had to live with the sucka's. Never doing raised beds again, In the south its just like building apartment complexes for the ants!

GOOOD LUCK!

 

[vfem]

DIE FIRE ANTS DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am queen of the boiling water with vinegar approach. Sadly, they just move somewhere else. Long as its out of my yard, good luck too 'em.

In my garden I have tons of black ants... I just let those be. The more of those I seem to have, the less often I run into fire ants. :/

 

[Jared77]

I heard from someone in Florida that quail will eat them. They put up a fence around the garden and clipped the wings on the quail and let them in there and they ate every ant and bug in site. They left her garden alone too but picked off every beetle, fire ant, whole 9 that came in.

I live in Michigan and have had 1 experience with fire ants and that was enough to keep me north of the Mason Dixon line so I can't speak to first hand experience with this just what I was told.

Plus the quail make good eats too.

 

[thistlebloom]

Flickers eat ants too, like about 40% of their diet! We have carpenter ants out the wazoo so I like to encourage the flickers by keeping the suet baskets full.

 

[luvsdirt]

We are in Texas and have a lot of Harvester ants (BIG reds) which we don't bother because the horned toads love them (in fact the horned toads are making a come-back on our farm because we leave the Harvester ant beds alone. BUT there's a big bed behind the garden and they have a trail right through it into the chicken yard. One stung my toe the other night and it hurt so bad for @ 5 hours! Soooo, this particular ant bed has to go.....before they get the grandbaby! :tools

 

[beavis]

you can get eco-friendly ant spray made of either mint or cedar oil. Spray it on em, they die........