How To Get Rid Of Ants

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Copyright © 2013

Written By: Doris Walker

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How to Get Rid of Ants

Tip 1: Don’t Attract Ants

Tip 2: Household Spices.

Tip 3: Do Some Yard Work

Tip 4: Moth Crystals

Tip 5: The Old Fashioned Way

Conclusion

Resources

How to Get Rid of Ants

Ants, those little six-legged insects that arrive in the thousands and never seem to want to leave your home or yard, are a yearly challenge to any home owner.  There are more than 12,000 species of ants in the world.  Some ants are attracted to sweets, like sugar.  Other ants are attracted to grease.  Some will skip the sugar in your cabinets and go for the flour.  Determining what kinds of ants have invaded your living space can be nearly impossible for anyone except an expert.

So, how do you get rid of the ants boldly crawling along your baseboards or building hills in your flower bed?  There are several methods that will get rid of any type of ant, or at the least discourage them from being where you don’t want them.

Any hardware store or big box retailer will sell you an ant poison.  These methods are effective, but toxic and dangerous to pets and young children, not to mention the environment.  Most of us would prefer a method that both controls the ants and is safe to use.

Here are five tips for homeowners looking to rid themselves of a plague of ants.

Tip 1: Don’t Attract Ants

Are there ants in your house?  Crawling across your floors?  On your countertops?  Under your sinks?  Ants get inside your home for a reason, and it’s not the warm cozy lighting.

Ants enter homes looking for food.  In some cases, like with carpenter ants, they also want some place to live and use your home to do it.  But for most other species of ants the only attraction for them in your home is the ready supply of food.  Obviously we can’t stop keeping food in our homes.  So the trick is to eliminate the access ants might have to our food.  If we eliminate the temptation for ants to come inside in the first place, they have no reason to stick around.

Ants send out scouts to look for food sources.  A single ant crawling through your home is most likely a scout.  If they locate a source of food, they’ll bring some of it back to their colony and teach other ants how to find it, too.  Killing the single scout might stop the ants for the moment, but not for the long term.

So how do we keep our homes from becoming a temptation to the ants?

Clean your home on a regular basis.  That’s the place to start.  Sounds simple, but all of us are guilty of letting our cleaning chores slide from time to time.  If you leave small pieces of cereal on your kitchen floor for days at a time, the chances of an ant scout finding it and calling more of its friends to the same spot are pretty good.

Clean your floors, the countertops, and any other surface where food residue might build up.  Use household cleaners that will remove any food stains or grease.  Don’t just use water.  Clean thoroughly, and often.

Clean your sink and your garbage disposal unit regularly.  Food residue tends to build up here and will attract ants to your sinktop but also to the counters underneath.  If you keep a composting container under your sink of food residue and food scraps, make sure it is tightly secured and clean on the outside.  Take a good look around your kitchen area.  Where else might attract ants?

Keep your food in air-tight containers if it isn’t stored in your refrigerator.  Cookies fresh from the oven that are left sitting on a plate next to the stove can make for a tempting target for ant scouts.  Cover them with plastic wrap, or better yet, put them in a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid.

If you keep opened bags of sugar or flour or corn meal in your cupboards, wrap them in plastic wrap or better yet, put the unused portion from each bag into a sealed plastic container.  Make sure the lip and outside of the container are clean of residue from sugar granules or other substances.

Making your living space into an unattractive place for ant scouts is a great first step towards keeping ants out of your home completely.

Tip 2: Household Spices.

Remember that ants seek out food by using their own unique sense of smell.  Once they’ve found a food source, they lead the rest of their colony to it by laying down trails of pheromones that the other ants can follow.  Once you find these trails, breaking or disturbing them means that the ants won’t be able to follow them anymore.

Spotting the trails the ants are using is simple enough.  Where the ants travel in a line back and forth, from wherever they come from to wherever they are going, is an ant trail.  This is your target.  Even vacuuming up all the ants you see may not keep others from using these same pheromone laden trails.  Once you locate a line of ants moving back and forth in your home, you need to break the trail.  When this is accomplished, the ants will go somewhere else.

Several common household spices do just exactly that.  Ants won’t travel over a spill of spices laid across their lane of travel.  Spreading salt or cinnamon across the ant trail will confuse them enough that they won’t go back that way.  And, these substances aren’t poisonous.

Other spices, like cayenne pepper, red chili pepper, and black pepper actually will repel some ants.  Placing lines of powdered spice from these peppers across the trails will confuse the ants, discouraging them from travelling in that direction.  But the ants may also scatter away from anywhere you put these spices, repulsed by the strong odors.

Baby powder, or talc, works in much the same way.  Draw a line of baby powder across the ant trail, and this will stop them from using that lane of traffic.

Draw a line with baby powder or spices around your window sills or other likely entry points for ants into your home, and you will have erected an effective “wall” to keep them out.  Finding the ants’ entry point may take a little detective work.  But, it’s usually as simple as following the ant trails in both directions until you find where the ants are coming in.  If the ants are entering through a hole or a crack, a little household caulking compound might close their way in permanently.

Getting back to household spices, a way to repel ants and make your home smell nice too, is with mint.  The odor of mint, and spearmint too, will repel ants.  Crushing mint leaves into the corners of your home or along your baseboards will keep ants away, and leave your house smelling nice.  The same trick works with sticks of spearmint chewing gum.  Both substances are things you can leave just wherever and not worry about.

All of these remedies involving spices and natural herbs are cheap and non-toxic.  Simple solutions to what may seem an overwhelming problem.

Tip 3: Do Some Yard Work

So there are a number of things you can do to keep ants out of your home, or repel them once they get in.

But what about ants in your yard?  In your flower bed?  Or in your garden?

Ants have a nasty habit of taking over more and more of your yard as they grow their colony.  And every year, a colony will produce a number of queen ants looking for space to build another nest.  Best to encourage them to move on sooner, rather than later.

There are a few easy and non-poisonous tricks that you can try in your yard to keep these pests away.  The first, is a little creative planting.

Just like mint will repel ants from inside your home, it will repel them from you yard too.  Planting some mint around the border of your home, under windows, along your walkways, or in neat patches on your yard, will discourage ants from making your home into theirs.  Mint plants can grow to be more than a foot tall, and tend to take over whatever area they grow in, so planting them in your garden isn’t recommended.

Other plants will repel ants in your yard and your garden both.  Lavender and rosemary, for instance, will repel ants with the strongly scented oils they produce.  These plants are lovely and smell as good as they look, so they can be used for decorative trim or as borders for your garden.

Garlic is another plant that can be used to repel ants.  Its strong smell is considered unpleasant to the little insects.  Humans, on the other hand, tend to love both the smell and taste of garlic.  Garlic presents a way of keeping ants out of your garden and of growing something useful at the same time.

Besides the careful and creative use of plants, a good garden hose might be your best defense against outdoor ants.

Locate the colony’s nest in your yard.  The nest outside will be marked by several small holes and by dry ground, possibly by a raised area, and lots and lots of ant activity.  Once you’ve located the nest, drown them thoroughly with a garden hose.  Water them until the ground is good and soaked.  Ants don’t like to be wet.

It may take a few days of this, but the ants will get the idea that they aren’t wanted, and move on.  Watch the rest of your yard carefully to make sure the ants haven’t just taken up residence in some other part.  Reapply the water as needed.

Making your yard ant-proof is just as important as making the inside of your home ant-proof.  If the area is inhospitable to the little pests they’ll have no reason to stick around.

Tip 4: Moth Crystals

Moth crystals are a type of chemical in crystalized form.  On contact with air the chemicals the contain vaporize slowly.  Ordinarily these crystals, just like moth balls, are meant to be used in confined spaces so the toxic fumes they release can repel insects like moths.  But, there are several other insects these crystals work on.

Like, ants.

More useful in getting rid of ground bees, moth crystals have some success in removing ants from yards as well.  But because they are a chemical, they aren’t to be used in the home when the goal is to remove ants.  Just the yard.

Moth crystals are available from most any hardware or retail store.  They’re sold as a method of keeping insects out of closets and such.  Well, what’s good for your closet is good for your yard.

Again, locate the ant hills.  Once this is done, sprinkle moth crystals around the ant hills.  The smell from the crystals will permeate the area, bothering and irritating the ants.

This will encourage the ants to move on to another area. It may take a few applications over several days.  And again, once the ants have moved from the area where you applied the crystals, be sure to keep a careful eye on your lawn to make sure they haven’t just moved over to another spot.  If you find they have relocated, apply moth crystals there as well, or use any of these other tips.  Apply as needed.

Moth crystals aren’t exactly non-toxic.  They are a registered pesticide and prolonged exposure to the vapors can cause a range of health problems in humans, including breathing issues.  However, using the crystals in your yard, in the wide outdoors, shouldn’t cause any issues for you.

Your pets are a different matter.  This method isn’t for use if your dog or cat is going to find them and lick them up.  Keep pets away from moth crystals at all times.

However, this method isn’t harmful to your lawn.  And just like the other tips, it’s inexpensive and easy to do.  You’ll still have to guard the inside of your home from invasions of these little pests but that will be much easier once the ant hills in your yard are eliminated.

Using this or the other tips already presented here should take care of any ant problem you run into for your home or yard.  However, if none of these tips do the trick, there’s still one more thing that you can try.

Doing it the old fashioned way.

Tip 5: The Old Fashioned Way

With so many different kinds of ants in the world, there’s no guarantee that any one method will work with the species you’re facing.  Laying down lines of salt or cayenne pepper might work.  Using crushed mint to line your window sills and baseboards might work.  Planting rosemary or garlic in your garden and along your pathways might work.  Shaking moth crystals around the locations of known ant hills might work.

Then again, they might not.

If you try the other tips, and nothing works, there’s always pesticide.  In fact, it might be your last and only resort.

There are several different kinds of pesticide, or poisons, available for home use.  All of them have to meet strict safety standards before they can be sold.  But that doesn’t mean they are completely safe.  Read the instructions on any pesticides you plan on using.  Know what you should and shouldn’t do with them.  Never put pesticides in your mouth, and that includes putting contaminated fingers in or near your mouth.  If you experience trouble breathing or other abnormal health issues while using pesticides, stop using them immediately and contact a doctor or hospital.

In short, pesticides are a last resort and should not be taken lightly.

Inside the home, bait is an effective method to kill ants.  Some companies sell ant bait traps that consist of discs with tiny holes that the ants crawl into to get at the bait and then carry it away to their nests.  At the nest, the scout ants who took the bait feed it to other ants, including the queen, hopefully eliminating the entire colony.  These ant bait traps are a good solution for homes with pets and young children.  If you are using the liquid bait, be sure to place it in an area where no one but the ants are likely to access it.  Instruct children to stay away from the bait and not to play with the traps.

Sprays are also effective inside the home.  Spray directly on ants or known ant trails.  This will only kill the ants touched by the spray, however, whereas bait can be brought back to the colony and possibly wipe out the entire nest.

Outside the home, sprays and ant powders can be effective.  These are applied directly to the area where known ant hills have been spotted.  Again, this method is risky where small children and pets reside.  Be sure to ask your retailer what type and method of ant poison they recommend for your area and particular variety of ant.

If all else fails, contact a professional exterminator to come in and kill the nest.  This method can be costly, and almost always involves the use of poisons, but if everything else has failed, it may be your only option.

Conclusion

In the war against some of mother nature’s most stubborn pests, humans seem to be at the disadvantage.  Ants multiply by the thousands, are small, and can be tough to exterminate, especially if the queen goes untouched.

The tips provided to you here are several of the most simple methods available to you to tip the scales in your favor.  Sometimes the easiest solutions are the best.  Don’t let ants ruin your home and your yard.  Take charge.  Take control.  Take action.

Resources

- Sign up for free Kindle books delivered to your email @ JustKindleBooks.com

- Visit OrganicGardeningSecrets.org to learn about Doris’s other gardening and “Eco” friendly solutions.

- Get instant access to over 16,000 woodworking plans and projects

Table of Contents

Copyright

How to Get Rid of Ants

Tip 1: Don’t Attract Ants

Tip 2: Household Spices.

Tip 3: Do Some Yard Work

Tip 4: Moth Crystals

Tip 5: The Old Fashioned Way

Conclusion