Hi mammas! our yard has quite a few fire ant nests. normally i'd dust them with chemical fireant killer and they disappear. but now our kids are wanting to go outside and i just don't feel comfortable having them walk through fireant dust, or playing with toys that have rolled through it. Is there something i can do to get rid of them? ALSO, i do have a small garden plot that the ants seem to LOVE, so whenever we want to weed, or pick a flower or what have you, you never know if you're going to uproot a mass of these nasties. i can't use chemicals on this garden area, as i would like to actually EAT the few things we manage to grow. any advice?
Talcum powder works for us. I have heard that these others work too. Cayenne pepper and Mashed potato flakes. Good luck!
my "bug" guy at Chem-Tech put down something on my entire yard 4 or 5 years ago and my yard is STILL ant free!! Don't know what it was, but just told me to keep the kids off the yard for a couple days and I'm THRILLED. If you're in the Houston area I can give you their phone number.
Orange oil works and is completely nontoxic although I'm not sure how much you dilute it. Call the Natural Gardener and they'll be able to tell you exactly what you need to know and they sell it there too, although I even saw it for sale at HEB.
My mother in law uses a whole box of Grits per mound. She says it takes a while but it works.
I haver tried the SAFER brand and it did not work! Try sevin dust. It is a chemical, but one of the better ones for using around kids and pets.
There is a product named "Top Choice" that is safe in the yard and garden. We've had it professionally applied the last two years and are having it done again next week. It is somewhat expensive but it does take care of it. Our exterminator guarantees it for a year and came back last year to spot treat two spots. I just found that it can be shipped to Texas so if you want to do it yourself, google Top Choice and some sites will come up. You'll need to calculate how much land you need to treat to determine how much to buy.
grits!
My dad used to pour boiling water on them. I think it just made them go underground but it was a deterrent. If they do get bit though if you keep a 9 part water 1 part bleach solution nearby and dab it on the bites very soon, then it takes the itch out of them.
We are in Austin and also have some trouble with fire ants. What we have found that seems to work and is totally safe for my kid to walk on, play around is diatomaceous earth.
Here is a site that tells you more, though you could google it too.
diatomaceous earth
I will say that Home Depot/Lowes carries this too. Although their product is much coarser and should not be ingested by a human. I have a friend who purchases the food grade quality and doesn't worry about it. My kiddos are old enough that I don't worry them putting things in their mouths outside.
HTH
Kelly, mama to
Catherine, 5y
Samuel, 2y
EDD 9/09
I use boiling water and Bronner's Peppermint soap.
Squirt the soap around the mound to keep the ants from running away. Then pour 2-3 pots of BOILING water over the hill. Stir it up to make sure it's no longer moving around. Keep the water concentrated on the mound and it will take care of the problem. Do this when the ants are up near the surface, later in the day.
I've had great results with this method.
Good luck! I HATE those lil' suckers.
I have a recipe using all natural products that can be purchased through a company that I sell products for.
http://www.vinegartips.com/gardening/
Destilled White Vinegar. This site has gardening and other uses for the stuff. I moped my floor with bleach for years. This stuff works much better than bleach on my floors. No green thumb so not sure about the ants...but we do have some beds that i will try this out on!! Good luck.
Kate,
The trick is to kill the queen along w/ the rest of the ants. Otherwise, you won't get rid of them.
Try boiling water (has to be truly boiling) to kill the queen ant and the rest of the colony.
Another trick is to use dry ice. Take a good size chunk of dry ice (be sure to use gloves when handling dry ice) and using a stick of rebar, poke it all the way down to the very bottom of the ant hill/colony. The extreme cold will kill the queen ant and the remainder of the colony.
HTH,
Jen
We are also dealing with fire ants, we are at war! We tried boiling the mound with a 3 gallon pot. We did it 3 or 4 times one day and did manage to kill any of them that came into contact. I can't remember if we killed the queen that day, but we did manage to kill all grass and weeds in that area. Two months later we still have a dirt spot in that lawn.
We have two small kids who love to play in the backyard as well. I have pretty much gone organic in my eating and way of thinking since having children so I understand about wanting to be environmentally/children friendly. After our first battle with the ants, they set up shop else where in our yard. We bought an organic ant killer that is a bait that they take back to the queen, it works within 24 hours and it is natural. You can buy it from Red Barn (who also promote natural gardening and lawn care) or from Clean Air Gardening's website, they sell natural versions of chemicals and fertilizers. Here is the link to the fire ant killer:
http://www.cleanairgardening.com/fireantkiller.html
You will have to treat the mounds as they pop up, but it hasn't been too bad. Good luck and remember you are at war!
This will probably be determined by the size of your yard, etc. I have about a billion spiders in my yard that happily eat up buggies. But these ants are bit annoying and I'm allergic! I might be wrong, but it sounds like you might be seeing satellite colonies or little mounds that are actually bubbles off the main nest...they can be very deep, especially in regions prone to drought.
My main interest is keeping those buggers from popping up all the time. And i think this might be one of those humid rainy gardening seasons :D I work on my yard as a resource to feed our family, so I am perhaps overly cautious with what methods i choose to experiment with. So far what I use mostly is cinnamon to drive them away. Works on every ants I've met and just gets them to packing!
Heard of, but yet to try: grits/cornmeal - but i think that might not be wholly accurate as adult ants only eat liquids so they'd have to feed the larvaes the cornmeal...50lbs of granular molasses forces evacuation but ups your spider ratios! A quick search reveals LOT of new patents for products made of pine oil. So a bulk natural pine oil mixed with perhaps varied surfactants to experiment with will be what I try to disperse next probably. I've been lightly jacking with cedar chips and oils mixed into my soils and that's been alright.
Also, I use vinegar to kill grass and weeds to pull in large areas...no ants underneath after, but they are still in near proximity. The largest area became my compost, so i will repeat vinegar periodically. From there to the end rocks that perimeter the garden i will probably work in some level of barrier protections too.
Do you have potted plants? You might check those as well. They ate some ginger root i planted from the inside out and just left the withered skin! So you might be dealing with a TON under your earth. The have no natural predators and so they are just bullying their way across the lands. I met an incredibly knowledgeable Texan gardener recently who said the only way was to inevitably dump a bait product on them. I am not really ready to go that route with the garden my family eats, so I am still playing around with things that work - for me, it's cinnamon!
a friend of mine recomended this to me.
Aztec Organic Pest Control in Austin is a GREAT company. We love them & have been very pleased over the last 4 yrs.
I use this stuff called Prespot by Melalueca. It is really like spray n wash for clothes but the stuff they sell is not toxic and good for the environment and people. Anyway this spray works well to kill the ants. You can find a distributor or look on Ebay. I've gone thru a few bottles my self strictly for ants.
My mom is into all natural killing of fireants. She boils water, pours it over the mound & around it, then sprinkles cheap store brand grits all over the mound & about 6 inches or so around the mound. It seems to work. My kids run in to her, "Oma, get the grits!"
Good luck! I know what a nuisance ants can be!!