Thursday, May 16, 2013

Ants! Ants! Ants!

I've noticed quite a few ants in the garden- more than I am comfortable with.  We have such great organic soil and with all the moisture, it's tough to avoid ants all together.  However, after some extensive research, I have determined that making an ant bomb may be the best thing to do.  It's natural enough to use in your garden - or your kitchen for that matter.  Side note - even though Borax is a fairly safe way to kill ants, I would still recommend keeping it away from pets and children.

Put 4 oz of water in the jar
Add 1 tbls of Borax
Add 1 tbls of Powdered Sugar
Mix well
Add cotton balls and mix it up again making sure to cover cotton balls with the mixture
When you are done, poke holes in the lid and place in your garden (I used a hammer and nail)

It's important to keep equal parts Borax and Powdered Sugar - you can't have more Borax than powdered sugar, or the ants will avoid it completely.

You'll want to mix a new solution 2-3 days later if you still see a lot of ants.  You shouldn't have to repeat this more than once or twice before you notice a major decrease - or eradication -in the ant population.

Within 10 minutes of putting it in my garden, ants were all over it!

Take a look for yourself:


So how exactly does this work?  The ants will feed off of the mixture (because they love sugar) and they will take it back to their colony.  The entire colony starts eating the mixture and it wipes them out.  I hate the thought of killing anything, but I also hate having ants in my garden!

I have also placed one of these jars on my kitchen counter as ants have seemed to take a liking to that area.  From what I've read, it should only take a couple of days and the ants should be gone!

And if you have to buy a big container of Borax, don't worry!  You can use the rest for laundry and cleaning.

Borax is much safer than other pest control and I encourage you to research it on your own.

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