When it comes to ants, you may find them popping up in more places than just your garden. With a number of different kinds of ants, you may experience ant problems in your garden, kitchen, or other places around the house.
While there many different types of ants, such as sugar ants, red ants, fire ants, and black ants, they all have similar exoskeletons and can be removed in the same ways.
Dealing With An Ant Problem
As an issue that can happen in both your indoor or outdoor grow area, knowing how to handle ants that become a nuisance is essential to ensuring a healthy crop.
Generally speaking, ants don’t cause too much trouble in your garden. In fact, they’re actually quite helpful in eating harmful pests and breaking down organic matter. However, if their population gets too large, you may find damage within your root zones, which we definitely don’t want.
Of course, if you’re attracting fire ants and simply don’t want to run the risk of being stung, you may find using the below remedies helpful in getting them to relocate outside of your walking areas.
Although, the real problem with ants becomes when they begin carrying insects that you don’t want into your garden. Some of the most common pests that ants can bring into your garden include:
- Mealybugs,
- Aphids,
- and other insects that enjoy sucking sap.
For this reason, many growers prefer to get rid of the ants before they bring in more problems to the garden.
Getting Rid of Ants
When trying to remove ants from your growing area, there are quite a few ways to get these little guys to find a new home. You can even use some of these methods to remove ants from the kitchen and other areas of your home!
Of course, when it comes to indoor ant issues, nothing beats keeping a clean area with nothing for the ants to chow down on easily.
Vinegar Mixture
One of the simplest ways is to simply mix up a bottle of water, soap, and vinegar. Then, spray or pour the mixture on to the ant hill. This will not only kill the ants but will also encourage the ones that survive to relocate to safer grounds.
If you’re indoors, try to locate their entry point into the home. Once you do, spray the mixture over the opening and along their usual path. This will help tell them they can no longer enter that way.
Diatomaceous Earth
Another option to get rid of ants is by using diatomaceous earth. Simply pick some of this up at your local garden store and sprinkle where you know ants will be crossing paths with it. Since ants have an exoskeleton, the diatomaceous earth effectively harms their outer coating, which basically turns their insides into mush.
Orange Peels
For this one, you can choose to either:
- Break up the orange peels by hand and lay around the area you are trying to keep them out of.
- Put the orange peels in a blender with 1 cup of water per peel. Then, spray or dump of the areas where you are looking to keep the ants at bay.
Essential Oils
Yup, you guessed it – orange essential oil! This, peppermint, tea tree, clove, or lemon essential oils will also repel pests. The best way to do this is to add a few drops to a cotton ball, then wipe down where you are looking to prevent them from going. Alternatively, you can choose to add a few drops to a spray bottle. Then, simply apply where needed.
Cinnamon
While it definitely isn’t the cheapest route, you can lay a thick border of cinnamon and the ants won’t dare cross it. If your problem is in one area of the home, this may be the simplest way to get them to turn around and find a home elsewhere. Find more ways to use cinnamon in the garden here.
No matter where your ant issue arises, know there are ways to get rid of them without spraying loads of toxic chemicals; inside or out.