A question about ants in soil

Moonshadow · Thu Sep 12, 2013 8:07 am

I just moved into my mom's old house, and she has four raised beds. One of them has had a consistent ant infestation, and possibly termites.

I'm not crazy about the location or size of these boxes, and am planning on taking them up and rebuilding/relocating them once it cools down and the mosquitoes all die. I want to save as much of the soil as I can and mix it with new stuff. Should I throw the soil from the ant-infested box in the woods, or is there a reasonable way for me to just convince them they don't want to live in my beds?

tomc · Fri Sep 13, 2013 3:32 am

Shoveling the beds around is often a fix for ants.

Most ants are (fire ants excepted) not worth removal. They don't cause enough damage.

Moonshadow · Fri Sep 13, 2013 10:07 am

Yeah, they're not fire ants. Just your average black deal. I remember reading at one point that a large enough group of them was problematic, but I'll see what happens. Thanks!

imafan26 · Fri Sep 13, 2013 3:23 pm

Ants do move the soil in the garden, but I would not want an ant nest in or near my garden bed. I had an ant mound just outside my garden bed once, and I accidentally was standing on it and did not notice until the ants were crawling over me and biting. I poured hot water on the nest, and they just moved over 5 ft and started a new one. I ended up using amdro to get rid of them.

While the ants do not cause direct damage to plants, they do tend aphids and aphids can cause a lot of damage to your plants.

!potatoes! · Sat Sep 14, 2013 7:55 am

many won't tend aphids or scales or whathaveyou either. as a guy who studied ants for years in college, I'd like to remind folks that there are thousands of species of ants, and many don't do anything that anyone would find a nuisance. ants fulfill a huge number of roles in the environment, most of them beneficial (many beneficial for the garden too) ...the better you can identify them, the more accurately you can predict their behavior, good or bad. if you see them doing something you don't want to have happen in your garden, that's one thing, but to assume particular behaviors because of things you've heard of their relatives doing...