After burying themselves in the snow all winter, ants resurface in the spring in search of food. If you are lucky, they will only attack your garden. Because for the house, you could have 2 years to be around carpenter ants.
In this article, we explain how to prevent the appearance of ants in the vegetable garden. As a bonus, we reveal a miracle recipe that will eliminate the queen from your colony and solve your ant infestation problem.
How do ants work?
You have probably already noticed worker ants in charge of supplying the colony. They walk in single file, seeming to follow a path that only they know. In fact, the workers leave pheromones behind when they pass. This makes it easy for their fellow creatures to spot the trail to the food.
Like bees and termites, ants are social insects with a very high level of organization. They are among the most numerous insects on Earth, as Werber reminded us with his famous novel The Ants.
If you see ants in the garden, they are probably looking for food to feed their queen. It will take agility and a lot of patience to overcome these hard workers.
How to keep them out of the garden?
You can apply several of these methods to prevent an ant infestation from attacking your valuable crops.
Put away wet wood that has been left behind
In Quebec, carpenter ants are known to cause a lot of damage. Since they love to lodge in your wet or decaying wood pieces, avoid leaving them lying around on your property or near the foundation.
Unlike termites, however, carpenter ants will not eat wood.
Break their pheromone-laden trail
To protect your vegetable plants from field ants, try diverting the feeding path of the workers. Using a flashlight, follow this trail in the middle of the night, when they are most active, and follow the path to the main nest of the colony.
Once near the nest, you will have to offer them a bait to divert their attention. Have jam or water with honey to attract them with the sugar. Be sure to position your bait halfway between your garden and their nest, so they will prefer your sweet treats to your garden crops.
Use diatomaceous earth
To control ants in an environmentally friendly way, get some diatomaceous earth and add it to your vegetable garden soil. This type of sandy soil is made up of the skeletons of microorganisms.
Ants hate poking around in these tiny pieces of sharp skeletons, so they will avoid your vegetable garden.
Long live the dead queen!
A sure way to get rid of a nest of ants is to locate the queen and eliminate her. Once the queen dies, the whole colony will die.
Once you have located the ant nest to be treated, spray it with soapy water. Using a gardening tool, stir up the wet soil. This should drown the ants. The operation must be repeated several times until there is no more perceptible activity.
Ants nest impossible to identify ?
If the chemical trail you’ve been following leads nowhere, it’s time to try the miracle ant recipe.
It consists of offering a bait of one part borax (or boric acid) for one part food. The sweet mixture – and harmful in small doses over the long term – will be ingested by the workers, who in turn will pass it on to the queen.
Contact Brisebois Extermination for your ant problems
Although we haven’t talked about it, ants aren’t just a nuisance to your vegetable garden. Without them, there would be even more decaying organic waste, poorly aerated soil and hungry birds.
You can choose to let ants work in peace in your vegetable garden. However, we recommend that you monitor their activity to ensure that they do not infiltrate your home. A much less obvious problem that may require the intervention of pest management experts.
If you can’t stand your ant problems any longer, contact our team of certified professionals on the South Shore of Montreal without delay!