I suggest the following procedure for eliminating ant mounds in lawns. First, rake the ant mound down level by spreading the dirt to the surrounding area. Wait several days to see if the ants rebuild the mound. If they do, you can chose to use an insecticide to reduce the population rather than fight the mound with repeated raking. After the mound has been raked level, sprinkle a small amount of diazinon granules or Sevin dust onto the area.
Source: Ant Control in Lawns - Iowa State University
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
Any ideas on how to get rid of ant hills in the lawn? This year my Mom and I both have really bumpy lawns, and we both seem to have been overrun with ants. I would like to be as natural as possible. I have tried hot water but they just seemed to come back.
Try hot soapy water. Dish wash soap works.
Sharon Martin
Canada
Pour aspertame down the ant hills. Ant's hate the stuff and it should get rid of them.
Put your used coffee grounds on the ant hills and they will leave.
Have i the answer for you. All those empty plastic bottle tops will come in handy with this recipe.
In a bowl mix equal parts of baking soda and icing sugar.
I have had real good luck with corn meal. Just sprinkle it around the mound and they eat it. Then they get liquid which swells the cornmeal and they die. Good Luck.
I use cleanser, like Comet or Ajax. Sprinkle it around the hole.
I tried everything: bleach, ammonia full strength. They disappeared and came back again. However, I tried full strength white vinegar. The haven't returned. It has been years now.
Give grits a try. Wait for a day that it won't rain. Sprinkle dry grits around the ant hill. The worker ants will come out, and take this to their queen as food. She will consume the grits, they will swell, and she will die. No queen, no workers.
Hope this helps.
Karen
A product called Amdro, sprinkled according to directions on label around each mound. Another product from Gardens Alive garden supplies online, called pic liquid ant killer. You drop these products in line of active ants, work perfectly and in the same manner. Each one is eaten or carried back to the queen(s) by the worker ants. Within a few days, (be very patient),the queen dies and the whole colony is destroyed, never to return. Unless you miss a mound, or stir the ants up first with a board or stick and scatter a few that may start another colony in a new location. If not, you can rest assured that these two products from two different mfgs. Do indeed work exactly as described, except on carpenter ants. That's an ant of a different color/story, and requires professional treatment every three months for two years. This is what the exterminator said where I used to work. God bless and help you. : )
How should I tackle removing the nest? It is approx. 18inches in diameter and approx. 15 inches high.
By Anne from Bristol
I would try pouring an ant killer down it.
Call the cemetery office and tell them.
I heard on TV today that ants hate white vinegar. Perhaps you could spray it before you try to tackle getting rid of it. On TV it said to put 1 part vinegar with 1 part water in a sprayer.
Buy boric acid it is in the laundry section in the store. pour it around the hill & then in it use a funnel so you can get it right over the top of the nest. BTW cover yourself long gloves and pull nylons over your pants so the ants can't get into your clothing.
I would call the office of the cemetery, and see if someone will take care of this for you. However, if you have to do it yourself, the best product I have found is a product we get here in Canada which is an expanding spray foam that you shoot into the ant hill. That does a good job of killing them most of the time. If it is a very large hill, you may have to do it more than once. I have tried diatomaeteous (sp?) earth, and that works, but takes many applications. I use it in my yard where I think my pets might tramp through a poisonous product.
i had a big ant hill in my garden and read on line how to get rid of it,boiling water,vinegar etc..i asked my 81 yr old mother and this really worked what she told me,so simple i didnt beleive it would work.She said go to the ant hill and in your mind ask them to leave,so i tried it,about 4 different times during the day i went out and asked them to move to the other side of the street.About 2 days later i checked and they were gone!unbeleivable!it really did work.Try it you"ll be amazed,i didnt want to burn or kill them for the sake of it and i dont usually believe in this sort of thing but it really worked,give it a go,it doesnt cost owt!
How can I get rid of ant hills naturally?
Mary from Michigan
I have fire ants in my compost bin, & I need something to kill them & not harm my compost.
Hi there, and so sorry to hear of your ant hill problem!! I used to get the BIGGEST ant hills. They were GIANT. The BEST thing I found was to pour a pot of BOILING water on the largest hill first, and then move down the line... I had 4 pots going at once. lol.. Make sure to let the water saturate the soil, as ant hills can kind of 'shed' some of the water.
What could be more simple than BOILING WATER?? LOVED IT. It is now something I do each year, and kind of look forward to it, as funny as that may seem. It just works so well!!
Best of luck!!
I use cheap powdered laundry detergent and sprinkled it on the cracks when they surface after it rains. This seems to work really well.
I have hundred of ant hills all over my property and they are killing the pine trees nearby, it would be difficult to use boiling water on so many.
Any other ideas for a large quantity?
DO NOT BOIL VINEGAR if you want to be able to breath in your house. Boiling vinegar steam is a hundred times more offensive to the eyes and lungs than a whiff of cold vinegar.
I received the following information in an email. I researched it and found that Eddie Rhoades is a master gardener and this is posted on his site.
Eddie's brother Robert Rhoades has discovered an
environmentally friendly cure for fire ants that has been announced by
Walter Reeves on his Georgia Gardener radio program. Testimonial that it
REALLY WORKS are coming in.
Simply pour two cups of CLUB SODA (carbonated water) directly in the
center of a fire ant mound. The carbon dioxide in the water is heavier
than air and displaces the oxygen which suffocates the queen and the
other ants. The whole colony will be dead within about two days.
Here's the good side: club soda leaves no poisonous residue, does not
contaminate the ground water, and does not indiscriminately kill other
insects. Each mound must be treated individually and a one liter bottle
of club soda will kill 2 to 3 mounds.
Regarding ants on lawn, several people have posted suggestions for undiluted white vinegar. I took this advice and I can assure you that this treatment will kill your grass very effectively but the ants don't seem to give a darn.
I've recently discovered that a garden hose pipe on full power aimed at the top of the ant hill for a few minutes does the trick, I like to call it the "IndependANTZ Day" Method.
It's a lie, it doesn't work. Verified as FALSE on Snopes.com
Is there an easy, cheap way to do away with the mounds of ants popping up? I've heard of several household products that are suppose to work and don't.
By Joe D
Squeeze bottle with Karo syrup 90% add about 10% 20 Mule team Borax (not boraxo or hand wash). Warm and shake until dissolved. Place squirt where ants go but not where pets or wildlife might eat it. The workers carry it back to nest and the queen is killed. Queens can live 20 years and produce many more queens.
Hardiness Zone: 5a
Buttercup from Michigan
http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf63572362.tip.html
Once you figure out how to get your ant problem under control, consider ways to prevent problems from reoccurring in the future. There are several good brands of sealers and joint sand stabilizers on the market. These are designed specifically to keep weeds and ants from taking up residence in between the cracks of landscaping pavers. Although I have not thoroughly researched individual brands, several claim to be environmentally friendly and seem like a good, long-lasting alternative to using chemicals. My friends who are landscapers tell me that using them when installing pavers has become standard industry practice among many professionals. The stabilizers form an almost impenetrable barrier between the paver cracks by adhering the sand grains to each other and locking them into the joints. This prevents sand loss due to settling, while keeping out weeds and ants.
Good luck!
Ellen
sprinkle with oatmeal. The ants eat it and swell up and die.
I use the sugar-borax mixture dissolved in a little water and soak cotton balls. Put these on the anthills, or in a jar with holes poked in the lid and placed on the side so ants can get in. It takes a while, but they take the food back with them and the colonies are killed off. I had three of these in my yard for the better part of the summer. After one colony was killed off, I moved a jar to the next place I saw ants. Slowly, my yard became mine again.
Try pouring boiling water on the hill. Since the hill is located on/near a paved surface, the hot water won't make dead spots on your lawn, but it will kill the ants.
I find that each type of ant is attracted to something different...sugar or proteins. The tiny black ones in Texas are "sugar" ants, as are the lightest red ones.
But the "small red" ones that are really aggressive when stirred, are protein hunters. Pharoah ants are
similar to Carpenter ants in appearance but more "playful" and lively. Carpenter ants are after termites which are full of cellulose, I understand, often eating into the termite trails of wood as well. Pharoah ants are fairly harmless eating dead bugs mostly, cleaning up the garden. The sugar ants are harmless as well, I hear.
The huge FIRE ANTS and the medium fire ants are
easy to recognize because they are fighters and are darkest red in color, stinging to protect and defend their territory,often bullies to smaller ants. All ants don't need eradication, you know, because many perform a good function.
One might checktheir children and their own habits to see if any of them are dropping popcycle sticks, candy pieces, bubble gum, sugared gum, fruit, or juices/colas, ice cream, chocolate,etc in the paths/yard/garden.Once this is corrected, one might not find many ants because they will have nothing with which to support themselves and their queen . If we just concentrate on those that hurt
humans we can also try to make peace with the others and teach our children the same? (I hope I am remembering my temporary workdays at a pest control center correctly after several years of absence.)
We are to have dominion over all creatures
on the Earth, according to the Holy Bible, but not destroy them all, as many who don't understand this do. Some laws have gone ridiculously overboard protecting some creatures, and I don't advocate
protecting creature life over human life. God clearly
describes how we are to learn from even the lowly ant
as to working a lot, teamwork, harvesting, and storing for times when we may not be able to do so. He obviously created the ant with purpose in mind, don't you agree?He certainly speaks of the ant often. Good luck and God bless you and yours.
I have found a great product for ants. I fight the little tiny black ones every year. They would show up in our kitchen and both bathrooms. I found a product called "Andro". I bought mine at Lowe's. I just sprinkles a few of the grandules around the outside of my house and we have seen no ants since. I'm not sure what is in it, but the workers take it back to the nest to feed the Queen and it kills her. Once she is dead the nest is gone. It is recommended for all types of ants. Works like a charm!!
We have ant hills on our brick patio deck. A friend suggested pouring boiling hot water over them so the ants surface to the top. Do you know any other easy remedies? Anything that doesn't involve poison.
By Cindy Scotton from Suffield, CT
Spraying vinegar or applying crushed mint leaves or cloves on the patio and around their hills should deter them :-) They might make new hills nearby but just do the same thing with the new hills and they'll eventually move far away from the area and you won't have to worry about having used poisons or being called critter cruel ;-)
Bleach
Did you try the boiling water? We did this to some sugar ants that were living in the cracks of our sidewalk and driveway. It was very effective and also fascinating. We drowned them once and watched as the remaining living ants lined up carcasses outside the nest. After a few minutes, we did it again. There were very few living ants after that.
If you don't want to do that, boric acid is generally suggested as an effective ant poison. It is not toxic and is safe around kids and pets. Terro is one commercial version.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
How can I get rid of ant hills in my garden?
By Terry
I had a bad ant problem in Georgia when I lived there. Then, in a natural homeowner's sort of book, I read that boiling orange peels in water and dousing the ant hill with it will take care of the problem. It did! I boiled water and orange peels in a giant pot, and poured the water over the ant hill. Worked pretty well - I think the colony came back once or twice, but after doing it a few times it never did again
9 parts karo syrup, 1 part 20 mule team Borax in a squirt bottle (about). Warm just a little to dissolve. Put in areas your pets won't be able to eat it. Cracks, in the ant hole or around crevices. Be patient. They eat it for maybe up to a week and carry it back to the nest. Kills queen and all. Queens can produce other queens for up to 20 years. Kill the colony.
We have an ant hill about 3 feet high on our property. It is getting bigger. What do you recommend? Thanks.
By R Timmins
Many pesticides are harmful to the environment as well as the pests you are trying to eradicate. If you use boiling water for getting rid of ant hills it is completely safe and quite effective.
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