I left for few weeks and when I got back I was in horror when I discovered that a colony of ants had decided to make the vase of my plant their new home. I tried flooding the vase with tons of water, added cinnamon powder and diatomaceous earth with little to no effect. I can see diatomaceous earth work on fungus gnats but ants have a pretty strong exoskeleton and I don’t think little calcium crystal will do much to them. I’m considering repotting the plant but she is in the flowering stage and I fear it will be too stressful if not impossible to do so.
Does anyone have any idea on how to get rid of the ants effectively?
thanks
I use gasoline to get rid of them. But your plant may not like that very much
Have you considered just getting some ant bait stations from your local hardware store?
I need to get rid of them ASAP and in my experience the bait stations don’t really work that well
Do your additives include sugars or do you add moleasses? There has got to be something that the ants think is food?
No, no aphids or other pests, the ants are not on the plant they just made the nest in the growing medium and go foraging for food outside.
they are small black ants.
they just made the nest in the growing medium, the ant trail leads outside where the go foraging for food
This is my go-to place for all pest control issues. There’s a lot of information here about ants:
Simple cheap quick effective and safe!
I simply mixed 1 TBSP of borax (available at Walmart and many places and cheap and has many other natural cleaning uses - old school stuff before all the crazy chemically convenient stuff came out)-
3 TBSP of brown sugar as I don’t use the sterile white sugar anymore but if that’s what you have that works fine too. Then in the small container mixed the 2 together and then slowly added warm water and stirred it (I added to much water at first so it was more liquid than I wanted but it worked fine.
The ants either died while consuming the mix at the feeding trough or they carried the mix back to the nest which kills the Queen etc and that is the goal of this.
Less than 8 hours later…
There are many natural effective non chemical solutions to pest problems out there. Looks like the link you provided mainly offers chemically based poisons that I wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole!
Google will give you many options to deal with most things simply naturally and cheap!
Darn straight. Professional-level chemicals, no less!
Ok so poison your yard…groundwater…environment
I don’t get it…
Find something from them that kills the ants and costs less than $1 and doesn’t fk up the environment and let me know what you come up with that’s better than my recommendation
The only thing I use anymore.
Works great.
@M0bi0us implied that the situation was very urgent and that bait traps wouldn’t suffice, so I simply provided a variety of professional-level solutions. Neither cost nor environmental impact were listed as criteria.
You have either odorless house ants or sugar ants. You could have multiple colonies present. If want to control them quickly and effectively use this product
Only has a .05% active load. It’s mostly sugar and carbohydrates along with a non repellant. With social insects non repellants are essential as they cannot tell it is a pesticide and won’t emit warning pheromones to the other ants in the colony. Place a chocolate chip size drop in a couple places along the trail (away from plant if can) and walk away. Come back in 10-20 and see if they are hitting the bait. If so in a couple days the queen will die off causing the colony to collapse. Repeat until all colonies are eliminated. Try not to disturb their trails too much just Gently place drop and move on. Entry ways or corners work well as it forces the ants to the food. Good luck
Yep your absolutely right
Didn’t mean to rustle any feathers
Just wish we would lean towards the natural search for a correction first rather than chemical options.
just that our better future is with mom
Mother Nature
not dad chemicals.
Amdro is the best thing I have ever seen for ants. sprinkle a bit where they are moving, watch them carry it away, an hour later …NO ANTS
I understand your concern and IMO yes utilizing the 3 other forms of control (mechanical, cultural, and biological) would be ideal then using chemical control as a last ditch effort. Buttttt rub some garlic on your skin and take a walk in the Congo and let me know how that works. Malaria, dengue, Chikungunya, encephalitis galore. Sometimes chemical control is the only option for quick and long lasting relief.
Another example - every homeowner has termite treatments every 30 years or so… if not take a look under the house and see how much punky wood is under there from the damage assuming you don’t live in the desert (and that you’re not on a slab)You gotta pick your poison pun intended