Grow Your Own Magazine

we've almost finished building a new greenhouse onto an old brick base. It has a strip of concrete flags now the middle with soil borders either side. One of the borders has an ants nest in it- do we need to get rid of it and, if so, how?
thanks
x

Watering the soil with diluted oil of cloves is supposed to send the ants elsewhere. One bottle of clove oil to one full watering can. Or if you can expose the nest or can see the entryway, pour a kettle full of boiling water down it. The ants don't do a lot of damage but can undermine plant roots if you are planning on planting into the border.

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Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

i had a huge ants nest in No2 greenhouse, must have had half the ant population of Woking living in there, so unfortunately it was ant bait, i set two traps and watched them for about 10 mins going mad for the bait and carting it back to base, but then started to feel really guilty about killing a whole colony and had to leave. went to check on them two days later and not a single ant in sight, not even a dead one and haven't seen one since.

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Kernow rag nevra

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits
Albert Einstein

I used dry semolina and ground coffee some one on hear siad the semolina is ment to make the queen and explod when tey feed it to her it worked for me and they not suposed to like the smell of coffee

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Some things in their natural state have the most VIVID colors
Dobby

We have a few ants in our greenhouse- and by watching where they go shows up where there are black and greenfly.

I think a few in my greenhouse are eating/making funny holes in my strawberries! And something just ate half of the whole fruit - can't be birds, they have learnt not to go in the greehouse.

Jennifer

half eaten fruit sounds like you have a mouse

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Kernow rag nevra

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits
Albert Einstein

i discovered semolina last year,after a google,give a few days,then they run out of workers,you can also use polenta.

I have a couple of red ants nests on my plots and never really took much notice of them till last night.

After work I went to shut down the cold frames etc and took a look round my fruit trees. I spotted a couple of the critters on an apple tree and automatically thought they were farming aphids but no they were munching away at the base of a leave. They had got through half of the stem base.

If they want to declare war then so be it!

Semolina?.....do , please, explain further....you got me interested!!!

Ants LOVE nesting under concrete slabs: I have a couple on my lottie, and upturn them when the ant eggs are big and fat - then the birds have a feast (or I pick a few up to feed to the goldfish, they go mad for ant eggs)

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I came, I saw, I planted

Just googled semolina and ants....very interesting!!

pests - selfsufficientish - pests

Exploding ants.....well I never!!

thanks for all your tips- i shall give them all a go! particularly interested in the semolina/ polenta one... i'm not entirely convinced but we've got 3/4 of a bag of polenta that will just end up going to waste as i can't find a way to make it taste nice!!

put a small amount of semolina/polenta in shallow container,place where the ants are active,apparently the ever dutiful workers take it back to the nest and feed the queen,she cannot digest it,so explodes,so no queen,no more workers,thats why you have to be patient a few days,if they come back,repeat,and yoes,this does work.maybe it would work with other food stuff that is of the same sort of make up.

Thanks for that- I'll certainly give it a try- seems a lot more humane than poison.

I've certainly never heard of that before........

"The ants will take this back to her queen for food, as she can't digest it (in the same way as pigeons and alkasetza) she will explode."

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Manda.

Yet Nature is made better by no mean
But Nature makes that mean; so over that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes.

but it still kills them, without any risk to other things,when you think about it we are committing murder,needs must,

Its mass antiside

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Cheers Chris

Its only a chilli if it burns your mouth