Joz, have you tried DIATOMACEOUS EARTH?
It is not a poison, and does not harm worms or mammals or birds. It ONLY gets crawling insects with exoskeletons. It's fossilized plankton that has microscopic spikes on them, and it takes awhile, but it rips a crawling insect's exoskeleton up so much that it dehydrates and passes on.
I used 25 pounds in 2 applications of something like 12 or 13 pounds a time around my cabin. Got rid of our STINK ants slowly but surely. Now I have very few. Just dusted the perimeter under my cabin then outside of around my cabin. Full sized house might take 50 pounds. If I had an ant problem in my garden I'd put it all around and right on the hill. I did use some in my greens bed last year for the aphid problem. Hard to tell how well it did because i also mushed those buggers a lot, but they did disappear.
25 pound of food grade diatomaceous earth at tractor supply cost last year less that 13 dollars. I don't think i'd ever want to eat it though!!! It is like a bag of greyish chalky clay and is very dry, dusty.
Yeehaw Lesa and Ducks! Got your Peas in!
Today I switched gears and got the 2nd bed pertnear done, and removed a pole from the berry bed to use it to make a low frame for part of it. It was a horizontal pole that was for before I enlarged my garden and no longer needed to be where it was, the middle of the berry bed.
Gave the flat of baby bean plants a baby quarter strength dose of fish emulsion added to their water. Some of them that sprouted from premie seeds that I picked around december first made their first true leaves yellowish. They'll be ok. Mom bean plant made baby beans even though she had no more direct sunlight is all.
