help with fire ants!

[texasnewbie]

Hi, I'm a 1st time gardener starting out around Austin,Texas and my yard is infested with fire ants ! I've just put in a vegetable garden with various corn, beans, beets, tomatoes, peppers and whatnots, but I'm really concerned about how to keep the ants away from my plants and seeds ... Any suggestions for ways to keep these pests out without driving out my good little bug friends? I've heard of the texas two step and diotomaceous earth ( sp?) but don't really know what course to take. Also, what is a good way to fertalize one's garden organically if they didn't add compost in before they planted?

[opabinia51]

Cinnamon repels ants, good luck with your problem! My word.

You can buy large containers of Cinnamon from big box stores.

[elementfiftyfour]

I would reccomend a standard fire and killer like Ortho

Just dump a little bit of that on the mounds in your yard and it should kill the entire colony. I have no problem with ants being out where I am not ganna be walking or sitting in a chair trying to enjoy a beer but when they are biting my feet just because I walk through my lawn then they must die.
If you see more new mounds just keep at it and sprinkle more ortho ontop of them. Eventually you will notice that you have to treat the mounds allot less frequently.

As for fertilizer you can use a top dress Osmocote fertilizer.

The directions are on the side of the bottle but all you need to do is sprinkle a litte bit (bout a handfull) around the base of each plant. Careful not to let the fertizier sit against the stem or leaves though.
Another method is to drop a teaspoon in the bottom of each hole as you transplant your seedlings to give them a boost.

After that you can use Miracle Grow All Purpose Feed every 7-14 days.

[opabinia51]

At the HG we discourage people from using insecticides because of the envromental damage that they enflict on your soil, local plant life and on humans themselves.

Try the cinnamon first if it dosn't work then resort to something more drastic but, search out other options first. Insecticides should be used as a last resort.


Respectfully,

Opabinia

[Reptilicus]

Here in southwest Georgia there is nothing short of a napalm strike to get rid of the miserable creatures. I would love to think cinnamon would work but even the Ortho stuff only moves them. I bought my house a few years ago. The neighbors on both sides had run the ant off their property and on my previous owner's ( to be mine ) property. Well I can tell you that I can't get rid of them I treat them any different ways. All you can do is keep them on the run. The white powder stuff ( spectra ? )seems to be the best here.

Good luck, you'll need it.

[webmaster]

Seek and Destroy
I've had good luck finding the colonies and wiping them out with boiling water. Look everywhere, trace the trails to where they're coming from and dump boiling water down the holes.

Destroy the Ant Highways
Also note that ants climb on trees and travel from limb to house so be sure to trim any limbs touching your house and if it's legal in your state, trim any limbs that hang over into your property from a neighbors property. Vines are especially a nuisance.

You Shall Not Pass!!!!
I've done the above and it's worked well for me. But Opa's suggestion is a good one for helping to keep them out. It's been a year since the last attempt to re-enter and they've moved on to someone else's property.

[elementfiftyfour]

I had recently heard that southeast texas is getting Crazy Ants.

https://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2008/05/16/houston-suffers-attack-of-crazy-rasberry-ants/?mod=WSJBlog

Those will kill your fire ants from what I have read.

But then they will possibly burn your house down too.

[bcomplx]

Read labels carefully until you find a fire ant killer that uses spinosad as its active ingredient. This is a natural biological pesticide, made from two strains of soil-dwelling bacteria, that causes nerve paralysis and death after the ants eat it. It has no residual effect, and is a very useful tool in your fire ant-fighting arsenal.

Like every other gardener in fire ant territory, you will need to maintain boundaries. Go on fire ant patrol once a week, and use boiling water where you can on small outbreaks, spinosad on bigger problems. They will keep trying to push in because of the above-average moisture levels in your garden.
Barbara

[bflocat]

Hey TexasNewbie,

I completely sympathize with you. I lived in Louisiana for about 5 years, and I had to wage a major war with multiple fire ant colonies living in my rather small backyard. They were in the vein of Reptilicus' - nothin' short of napalm could kill them! I kept my dogs back there during the day, and they were getting eaten alive by the ants!

Because the dogs were back there, I tried a bunch of organic and natural methods first, including boiling water, cinnamon (which made my dogs smell nice, but sneeze!) and citrus-based sprays. Unfortunately they did nothing. I had better luck with the full-on Texas Two step method (with the Spinosad), which seemed to reduce their populations. But I have to admit that I eventually ended up using the Ortho stuff, which completely sucked because I had to kennel my dogs for a few days, then keep them inside the porch for a few weeks! But the ants were gone, and didn't return during the remaining years I was there...

I don't know how this would work with your veggies growing so near, but good luck! Seriously - one of the only good things about moving out of Louisiana was the escape from the fire ants!

[hendi_alex]

O.K., time for the trial. It rained a lot yesterday, and a fire ant colony mounded up seeking high ground, in a 35 gallon container where egg plant and a few strawberry plants are grown. I sprinkled a fairly heavy coating of cinnamon on and around the mound. Last year my one trial didn't seem to get any kind of result, but I keep reading of success using cinnamon from many of you.

Does anyone have some alternative that might be useful in forcing a colony to move from inside a planting area? Boiling water would kill the nearby plants, and I won't use any of the stong chemicals in the garden area.

[The Helpful Gardener]

Diatomaceous earth would be a soil beneficial way of moving them on; just ring the entrances and pour right onto the holes...the stuff cuts them to ribbons...

There are some fungal antagonists that can be found with a little diligent searching... Beauveria bassiana is finally getting available and has been successfully used for fire ants... don't know if these guys sell to the public yet, but it's worth a shot. Very cool stuff...

[url]https://www.biosciregister.com/Troy_Biosciences_Inc/Supplier/sid2927.htm[/url]

HG

[hendi_alex]

I've been considering diatomaceous earth as it sounds like a very environmentally friendly solution. Also, I'm getting quite an array of snails and slugs in the yard. We used to have none of the slimy criters, but I think they were imported via plant purchases. The only reason that I've held off on getting diatomaceous earth is concern over the resident earthworms. Will they not get sliced and diced by this product as well?

[Gary350]

Put a shop vacuum on the ant hole, turn it on and let it run for 2 days. As the ants come out of the hole they get sucked up. There may be 100,000. ants in the hole you can suck them all up if you leave the vacuum running for a while then the nest will hatch more ants and they get sucked up too. Pretty soon no more ants to hatch out and no more food for queen ant and the nest dies.

[atascosa_tx]

To stay organic and swaying from chemicals..Diatomaceous earth works slow..it kills the workers but nothing to the queen...
I use the gallon sized liquid molasses mixed with water to repel them...
it doesn't kill them, just repels them out of the garden. Then I use the amdro and other products to kill them.

Happy Gardening

[The Helpful Gardener]

I have just dug a little on AMDRO, but one of the ingredients, terpenoids, have been shown to shut down nitrogen cycling in soil, so you surely DON'T want to use it in the garden (and that's the least toxic part of this stuff; I'm still digging).

[url]https://www.amdro.com/Amdro/downloads/firestrike_msds.pdf[/url]

Turns out another ingredient is very toxic to fish, so you shouldn't get this stuff anywhere near a body of water...

[url]https://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/hydramet.htm[/url]

this ingredient is also toxic to fish...

[url]https://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/methopre.htm[/url]

It's a long list of stuff, but before you do anything with a chemical, the state makes pros READ THE LABELS. It's the law. Homeowners they pretty much let do what they want with pesticides, but pros have to read the MSDS and apply accordingly. Your next door neighbor has far less oversight than even the scant review of those trucks you see roaming the neighborhoods (one herd I would not mind seeing go extinct). Truth be told this stuff is less deadly than I thought it might be; there is even some new thinking in pesticides here...

[url]https://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1475088[/url]

but there is still the matter of the fish...is it an oxygen excluder? Some decreased birth weights in the lab rats, but at higher doses. Seems to be some bioaccumulation in bluegills, so maybe for filter feeders like clams and mussles too? Wonder if they've done testing yet...

I'm betting this stuff does a number on soil biology, and who knows about bioaccumulators like worms? Didn't see any testing there... So it's not DDT, but it isn't great. I thank my stars this is an issue I have not had to deal with personally, but suspect I'd try Beauveria. And kitchen remedies are always great. Molasses, huh? I know it as a bacterial stimulator; and there are some chitin eating bacteria that attack insects; it's why I love Coast of Maine's Lobster Compost, as the lobster shell are mostly chitin and help feed those bacteria...seems counterintuitive to use molasses, as ants like sticky sweet, but I know what it does to soil biology; it revs up the whole nitrogen side of the system. Has to be a function of that dynamic... you say it just moves them, Atascosa?

HG