ants in garden

[Rick]

Anyone know of a way to get rid ants in a garden? Its crawling with ants, have tried different things from the garden store but nothing seems to bother them?

Any help Please

[Mike C#]

I'd bet some praying mantises would bother them real good :)

[Ron Truitt]

Good organic solutions are:

Ant bait that sterilizes the queen and therefore kills the colony without harming anything else.

Or orange oil. You can buy organge oil concentrate here(Austin Texas area) and use a spray or drench. It does the job but may make your plants around the ant mounds look puny for awhile. After the ants die flush the soil around the plants with water.

Hope this helps.

Ron T

[Jim Ledford]

grits.

pour uncooked grits on the ground near the ant mount hole. keep the the grits dry so they don't swell until after the ants have eaten them. the ant can not handle or process the grits and the swelling action of the grits when they meet with the moisture in the ant will do the ant in.

however, unless they are [FIRE] ants, most people would consider ants in a garden a plus. soil aeration is an ant's specialty.

[Mike Robinson]

Boiling water works GREAT!

[Tom The Great]

Heard this was a myth, ants do not eat solid foods, so anything entering their gut is 'liquifid'.

Anyone know if this is a myth or fact?

later,

tom @

[Tom The Great]

I've found dropping a Raid ® Double Control Ant Bait in the area of foragers works for me. Typically after they find it, it is crawing with ants for a couple days. Then the ant numbers drop, and after a week, there seems to be no ants.

After the ants are gone, I learn "nature abhors a vacuum" and something else moves in, or the ants magicly reappear after several weeks.

Good luck,

tom

[Eggs Zachtly]

Or, rather, an indication that there possibly will-be/is an aphid problem. Certain aphids are a food source for certain ants. Depends on what kind of ants. If they're there because of the sugars that the aphids secrete, they'll stay until the aphids are gone, moving from plant to plant with them. It's definately worth checking out.

The OP didn't state what kind of ants, but judging from their location, I'm guessing they're not fire ants.

In topsoil, but garden soil should get turned plenty to keep it aerated. The ants will have little, if any effect, on the aeration of the garden bed, IMO.

[Jonny]

Myth.

[Jonny]

Some influxes of vacuum take longer to fill than others.

[Happybattles]

Heard this was a myth, ants do not eat solid foods, so anything entering their gut is 'liquifid'.

Anyone know if this is a myth or fact?

[This is a myth. Ants can and do eat solid foods. Their mouthparts are made for chewing. Most ants do not consume food themselves, but instead feed it to the larvae who do the chewing and digesting. Then, the workers, who are very busy, can just stop by, grab a quick snack (from the larvae barfing the food into the awaiting ants' mouth) and run along. Feeding them grits just means that they can spend their time enlarging the colony instead of looking for food. They don't die, you just make their jobs easier.]

[Too many ants tend to aphids, which we all know are very harmful to plants. The natural predators of aphids are killed by the ants who try to protect the aphids as a farmer would his cows. Try here for more information: ]

[Mike C#]

I thought I saw on Discovery Channel where some ants actually feed the larvae and then "milk" them for food - is this the case or am I just imagining things again? :)