With Spring and Summer comes the advent of those creepy crawly ants and anthills that seem to be impossible to remove. Ants are an incredible nuisance, and if you spend a lot of time outdoors, then you will need some tips on how to get rid of them. The key? Go after the anthills, as once their primary residence is destroyed, they will not be able to stick around to pester you. Here are some ant killing recipes for your garden delights…
Baking soda and Icing Sugar. Ants love sugar and are attracted to it. If you combine icing sugar with baking soda, they will eat it until they swell and explode. Prepare a mixture with equal parts baking soda and icing sugar, and keep it in a bottle. Poke some holes in the top of the bottle and they will find their way in….it won’t be long after this. You can also spread the mixture around noticeable anthills and let the chemicals do the work themselves.
Grits or cornmeal. Ants like corn as well, but with cornmeal, they are unable to digest it. As a result, they will bloat up again until they explode. Prepare a mixture with some water in the same way as described with the baking soda trick. Spread some around your hot spots, and let the mixture do the work.
Other tricks that you can use involved spreading products around areas, or lines, where ants are known to cross. If they ‘cross the line’ then they will look for areas in your home or garden to attack. But there are chemicals that ants won’t cross, and using these methods you can get them to stay inside their anthills until they de-populate themselves, or use it in areas of your home where they are known to prevail.
Chemicals such as lime, baby powder, and salt are all good chemicals to spread around areas that ants are known to habitate. You can also use these chemicals directly on top of the anthills to kill an entire population. Lime particularly is corrosive to ants and will destroy them almost immediately. If they find it in areas they cross, they won’t go near it. The same goes for the other chemicals mentioned.
All of these methods will work, and require very little cleanup. Once you have killed your populations, the next rainfall will take care of the debris very easily for you.