How To Control Ants Naturally
Ants can be found in your home or outside throughout most of the year. It is in the spring when we tend to
have the most problems with ants showing up in our yards and kitchens. You may wonder if ants can be
beneficial to your garden or if they cause damage to your plants.
Ants can be beneficial to your garden. Since they are predators, they hunt other insects that live
in your lawn and can aid pollination while they are foraging. However, ants like to build nests around the
root system of plants, which can stunt growth and leave plants more vulnerable to disease.
For more information about how ants contribute to flower pollination: Ant Pollination
Quite a few species of ant also eat honeydew, which is excreted by aphids as they feast on plants. Ants
have been known to protect aphids from other predators, such as ladybirds, to maintain a reliable food
source. Increased aphid activity in your garden, especially when they have bodyguards, can be disastrous
for plant life as they can advance unhindered through your garden, sucking out all of the tasty plant juice.
Test your knowledge, try the: Ants Quiz.
Dealing with ants can be very frustrating. Pesticides for ants contain chemicals that are harmful to humans
and the environment, but there are some natural, non-toxic ways to control ants. These may take some time
and patience, but will provide good results.
Most natural methods don’t work immediately. It’s because of what they are – natural, meaning, the
active ingredients in them are not as lethal for ants as what professional poisons will be.
Here are the top natural ways to get rid of ants without harmful chemicals.
If you want to keep ants off your hummingbird feeder, hang the feeder with fishing line. Ants find it difficult
to grasp the fishing line.
The most widely known natural ant extermination method is using boiling water. Simply locate as many
entrances to the nest as possible and pour boiling water inside. You may have to do this repeatedly until all
of the ants are dead.
This method has quite a high success rate as the dish washing liquid and oil soak into the ant
exoskeletons and suffocates them. All you need to do is mix half a teaspoon of liquid dish soap with one
and a half teaspoons of cooking oil (olive oil and canola oil work best) with 1 quart of water (0.946 kilograms
or 2.08 lbs or 33.38 ounces). Once the mixture is ready, pour some into a spray bottle to take care of ants
outside the nest and then pour the rest directly into the nest.
For more information see: Do-It-Yourself Safe Pesticides.
This is possibly the most effective home remedy for getting rid of ants. Mix boric acid with sugar until it
turns into a paste and then place small amounts of the paste around the entrances to the ant nest. Ants love
sweet things and so they will be drawn to the paste, they will eat some and carry the rest back to the nest
for the queen. Shortly after eating the sweet paste, the queen and other ants will begin to die due to the
boric acid.
Pouring around 1 quart of white vinegar directly into the nest can work wonders. It is not harmful to the
ground or your plants, but it will kill the ants on contact.
Nematodes microscopic worms are the natural nemesis of ants. The tiny worms will hunt and devour
the ants whereas the ants will most likely search for a new nest as they cannot tolerate having their natural
predator nearby. For more information see, Beneficial Nematodes.
Diatomaceous earth (food-grade, mind that!) is effective against a variety of critters, both at home and
in the garden. You’d better sprinkle the ants’ path or around the plants, you don’t want the ants to get
to. DE works well if the soil is dry. The wetter the surface is, the more time it will take to do its magic.
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