Ants, a problem?

[sprinkl]

So I have a lot of ants in my garden. Black ones and smaller brown ones.
I put those boxes with insecticide 2 years in a row now but they keep coming back. They are pretty much all over. At least they're not coming in the house anymore. I would like to skip the 'cides a year because I fear they are getting resistant and maybe look for some other solutions, I like to keep my garden natural.
Will they attack the roots of my plants, I hope not? I planted some vegs so I should soon know...

 

[The_Core]

My experience with ants: Farmed aphids, aphids destroyed plants after the population exploded. Boric acid and sugar. Make liquid and solid combination and place near entrance. Colony gone in 2 weeks.

 

[trichosaurus]

Had a small population of ants near my plants. Applied diatomaceous earth and sprayed plants with neem oil as an aphid preventative. No problems thereafter fwiw.

 

[Kygiacomo!!!]

Diamtomaceous earth will take care of them.

 

[HillBilly1]

Yep use the DE. Good stuff

 

[gunnaknow]

Be careful not to breath in any DE dust, as it can cause permanent scarring of the lungs. Also make sure that it contains less than 1% crystalline silica, as inhalation of the crystalline form is more likely to cause silicosis of the lungs.

 

[sprinkl]

My experience with ants: Farmed aphids, aphids destroyed plants after the population exploded. Boric acid and sugar. Make liquid and solid combination and place near entrance. Colony gone in 2 weeks.

I had them farm aphids last year, ladybugs won't attack those aphids as the ants will attack the ladybugs but earwigs will get rid of the aphids, they are stronger than ants. So basically by making some places where the earwurms can rest(upside down pots with paper/woody bits in there) I got rid of all negative effects afaik.
I'm still wondering if they will attack roots when planted straight on a nest.
But I guess it can't hurt to reduce the colonies with some organic solutions as suggested. I don't see me dumping DE allover my garden though as they are literally everywhere.
The otherwise very compacted clay soil is now definitely nicely aerated though, those buggers aren't all that bad

 

[sprinkl]

Well the bean plants planted in the ant infested area aren't looking to happy.
I'm going to plant some garlic cloves there and see if they leave...

 

[dread]

i have had several plants growing on ants nest,never had a problem
good soil drainage
.......

 

[Hemphrey Bogart]

I battle ants in the yard every season it seems. With the drought we're having this year, I plan on having to be extra pro-active this year as the ant population is expected to be higher than normal this season. I have DE and I've used it before with some success, but when DE gets wet, it gets all pasty and doesn't work as well.

Tangle foot applied to the main stem is one thing I'm looking into. I'm going to try it on the fruit trees first and see how it works.

From what I've read, cinnamon is supposed to work well at discouraging them from getting a foothold. The good thing about using cinnamon is that it doesn't kill the ants....it just keeps them out of the area, which is what I really want.

I might try the borax and sugar thing, but only as a last resort.

HB.

 

[waveguide]

someone left some amdro somewhere decades ago... couple of crumbs of that, even this old, ants drag it off, ants go bye.

gotta be a more intelligent way to do it "on the ants level," but until i figure that out, .... met an exterminator who said optigard is more effective/safer than amdro.. good era for ant baits.


cinnamon and peppermint oil (arvensis) are fine for controllable routes/indoors..

 

[Featherfoot]

No sense freaking out everytime you see an insect in your garden and then running off to get something to exterminate it, they might do no damage at all.
In fact the ants might be beneficial in that they will keep other pests in control.
Mostly nature is in balance, it's when people mess with nature that these problems occur.

 

[The_Core]

I never use insecticide or kill any animals unnecessarily. I try to be closer with nature when its possible.

I let the ants live among my plants the entire season watching them farm aphids and in turn the aphids were destroying an entire plot of plants.

It was the first time I have ever actually seen how ants farm aphids. And the numbers were huge. It was a full blown colony. I never killed off the colony. Only used insect killer to wipe out the aphids. But of course they were back in days.

This year I will have to kill the ant colony. I do not want to. But if I dont then what else am I left with? Thats my take on the situation.

 

[buzzmobile]

Spinosad will kill ants without killing you. Inexpensive, organic and effective.

 

[sprinkl]

I never use insecticide or kill any animals unnecessarily. I try to be closer with nature when its possible.

I let the ants live among my plants the entire season watching them farm aphids and in turn the aphids were destroying an entire plot of plants.

It was the first time I have ever actually seen how ants farm aphids. And the numbers were huge. It was a full blown colony. I never killed off the colony. Only used insect killer to wipe out the aphids. But of course they were back in days.

This year I will have to kill the ant colony. I do not want to. But if I dont then what else am I left with? Thats my take on the situation.

I had ants last year that were farming aphids on roses before I started my veg/weed season. First I squished a bunch of the aphids against the branch. The scent released attracted predators, in this case I attracted lady bugs. But ants protect their aphids against ladybugs so it didn't help much.
So by putting some clay plantpots upside down, with some newspaper/dried grass clippings in there, I made some nice homes for my new best friend: earwigs

This bad boy isn't afraid of ants!

https://www.grdc.com.au/~/media/D588BCA249AA40A28AE64F4DC3C8B500.jpeg
Even better, he eats these fuckers as well! I wondered why I found so few of these compared to the year before.

God damn ants... Can't win every battle I guess.

Nevertheless, the bean plants I planted on what seems like a colony are as good as dead. Maybe the roots couldn't take ground with all that movement in there. Or I pissed the ants off by digging in their little colony and they went berserk on that poor little plant's roots.
I'm going to put some garlic cloves in the worst spots and peppermint shoots. I'm not spraying anything besides compost or organic nutrient tea. I feel that with the right companion planting and aromatic herbs you can tip the balance in favor of the plants without doing much else.
A bee and insect hotel are still on my to-do list, but ever since going full organic I haven't had any real pest problem besides snails. Beneficials all over, must've found like 20 types of spiders in my greenhouse last year. Also funky flies/wasps of different shapes and sizes. Been thinking about getting snail killing nematodes but they're not much of a problem as of yet. I'm using chemical bait to keep them at bay atm, but I put the bait in cups I throw away when filled with corpses so nothing leaches into my garden.

I'm 100% behind the let nature balance it out approach, only gotta provide a good environment if genetics are too weak for a natural environment it's because they're shit genetics only fit for sterile chemical indoor environments which is a shame on the cannabis gene pool.
Even the organic approved insecticides are sketchy to me... If it could possibly hurt good bugs, it's not worth any benefits it may give.

 

[MJPassion]

Sprinkl,
Do your ants reside in decomposing materials or an earthen mound?
It seems to me that ants will do everything in their power to eliminate roots inside their colonies homes. For no other reason than, if they didn't, the roots would penetrate every single open cavity of their home choking them off from parts of it.
It's the way they sweep the floors, per say.

 

[sprinkl]

They mostly reside in blank spots where I've been growing vegetables the past years. The soil is loose there from turning and adding compost, originally the soil was very dense, hard, much clay. I don't remove plant left overs or roots, that must have helped them as well. It IS noteable that few weeds if any grow on these blank spots, maybe they get culled by the ants as well?

I planted peppermint shoots and garlic cloves in the worst spots. Let's hope they move out, I want to start planting my weed in full soil already
Them biting off the roots is most likely what happened as they just shriveled, out of 8 spots where I planted 2-3 beanplants only at that particular spot the 3 plants died, at the other spots they're all doing fine. At all the spots there are ants around, it's just at this one spot that I busted a colony wide open, ants all over the place scrambling to save some eggs, and thought it would be a good idea to plant there anyway.

Well if it's only when planted straight on a colony I guess I could risk it with my pot plants, they have bigger rootballs already anyway.

 

[sprinkl]

Man I'd love to get one of these in my garden to eat all those snails and slugs:

They're a protected species though so the only way to get one is to attract it to my yard...

 

[Hillside Growin]

I have a problem with red fire ants in my veggie garden, 3 or 4 mounds in a small plot. everything that Ive used has just pissed them off and moved the mound down to the next row. they stripped 25-30% of my potatoes and radishes last season.
ive been told to use citrus oil and dried molasses but they're finally in a spot that Im not worried about and Id hate to move them back into my gardens by disturbing the nest.

nematodes may help
http://www.groworganic.com/parasitic-nematodes-heterohabditis-bacteriophora-10-million.html

 

[buzzmobile]

Controlling Fire Ants in the Vegetable Garden

I repeat...spinosad/spinosyn.