Many owners of vegetable gardens and dachas have experienced ants from their own experience. These small annoying insects can also settle in city apartments, creating a lot of problems. Therefore, the question of how to get rid of ants remains relevant. We offer you to get acquainted with the most effective ways that both summer residents and city residents can use.
Insect damage
Ant colonies cause many to associate with an established work process and amazing performance. But the owners of garden plots, gardens, cottages, greenhouses are well aware that these small insects can do great harm. What is it:
- Destruction of seeds and seedlings.
- Infection of fruit trees and shrubs with parasites - aphids, which for the ants themselves are a kind of "cash cows".
- Colonies cause significant damage to the crop, absorbing berries and tubers. The harvest of strawberries and strawberries is especially affected by them.
- They eat the petals and buds of flowers, depriving the garden of its main decoration.
- Industrious insects can destroy the root system of plants.
- Often they are carriers of diseases that affect fruit crops.
- Insects are also very harmful for houses, because as a result of their vital activity they spoil the wooden elements of the building, giving them rottenness and fragility.
- Finally, these insects bite quite painfully.
That's why the fight against ants is necessary both in the greenhouse and in the summer cottage as a whole. We offer you to get acquainted with the most effective ways, both from a series of professional tools, and from the category of craftsmen's advice.
Benefit
In fairness, it should be noted that small-sized insects can also benefit gardeners and gardeners:
- Due to their swarming in the ground, they loosen the top layers of the soil, making it easier for the roots to receive oxygen.
- Often destroy some pests - larvae of slugs, ticks.
But, despite these moments, insects do more harm than good, so effective remedies for ants should be in the arsenal of every summer resident.
Basic rules
To secure your site from uninvited guests or get rid of them, you must choose one of two methods:
- Prevention. Prevent pests from enteringgarden or greenhouse.
- Destruction. It is used if insects have already placed an anthill among the beds and harm the crop.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to destroy the entire anthill at once, then it is poured with boiling water or kerosene, covered with hot ash or a special poisonous agent is used.
An easy way to quickly destroy an anthill is to fill it with this mixture:
- Water - 5 l.
- Sunflower oil - 1 cup.
- Liquid soap - 1 cup.
- Vinegar - 1 cup.
Having watered the dwelling with this mixture, it is necessary to cover it for 24 hours with plastic wrap - and the colony is doomed.
Pros and cons of various means
There are a lot of tools that will help solve the problem, these are recipes from the piggy bank of folk wisdom, and professional tools. In the table we present their comparative characteristics.
| Folk | Professional | ||
| Pros | Cons | Pros | Cons |
| Do not harm crops and flowers | They can't always boast of impressive results | Quickly and effectively destroy even the largest colony of ants | Use requires compliance with safety regulations |
| Easy to use | Can't cope with a large colony | Some products have a prolonged action - not only destroy insects, but alsoprevent the emergence of new | Can be harmful not only to insects, but also to crops |
| Available | Many are able to cope only with adults, when offspring appear, the work will have to be repeated | The most effective remedies are either very harmful or quite expensive | |
| Cheap | The poison for ants may not reach the uterus, so after some time the colony will be replenished with new individuals | ||
| Various, each owner of the cottage can choose the option that suits him | |||
As you can see, each of the means to combat ants has both strengths and weaknesses. You can start to act with the use of folk methods, but if they turn out to be ineffective, you will have to use the achievements of the chemical industry. Next, we will consider these methods in more detail.
Making traps
The easiest way to deal with ants is baits and traps, which you can either make yourself practically from improvised means or purchase at specialized points of sale. Lots of them:
- Hunting belts. They are designed to protect young trees and shrubs not only from the ants themselves, but also from their pets - aphids.
- Velcro is attached to the trunk, and insect pests firmly stick to its surface. The owner simply needs to remove the used tape and destroy it. The best time to use such a remedy is the first half of March. Replacing the "belt"carried out in October.
For a homemade trap, you can use jars filled with sweets - sugar, jam. They are placed around the site, equipped with "bridges" of straw, so that insects can get there without any problems. They will not be able to get out of the sweet captivity.
How to make bait
Effective insect control can also be carried out with the help of baits, which are not difficult to prepare. Let's get acquainted with several options:
- The honey and sponge bait is very easy to make. Soak an ordinary sponge for washing dishes (you can use an old one) with honey, slightly diluted with water, and place it in a place where insects accumulate. When small pests cover it with a dense layer, it is enough to pour boiling water over the sponge, destroying them.
- As a bait, you can use almost any means: jars of jam, meat bones. All this will arouse the interest of insects, and the owner will only have to wait for fullness and destroy the pests.
The advantages of using traps include:
- Ease of use.
- Completely safe for both plants and people.
- Affordable price.
There is only one drawback - they will help in protecting individual crops, trees, beds, but they will not cope with a large colony.
Poison based baits
If the previously described remedies attracted the attention of insects, then other recipes will help and destroy them, therefore they are more effective in combating ants in the garden. There are a very large number of themwe offer you to get acquainted with the most useful recipes.
Required components are:
- 1 tbsp l. sugar.
- 2 tbsp. l. boiling water.
- 1/3 tsp Boers.
- 1 tsp honey.
The components are mixed, the borax must be added only after the liquid with the sugar dissolved in it has cooled down. The bait is laid out in places where pests accumulate, the change should be made daily.
Another effective way to make a trap is to mix a raw egg, 1 tsp. borax, ½ tsp red pepper. To shape the trap, mix it with flour and form into a ball. Put the resulting product in places where insects were observed. It will help in the fight against ants in the country.
An equally simple recipe is this. Required Components:
- ½ tsp Boers.
- 2 tbsp. l. minced meat.
The poison is laid out in the immediate vicinity of the anthill, a new portion is placed after the old one is completely destroyed.
Yeast based product
In the fight against ants, homemade yeast-based products have proven themselves well. Summer residents who are tired of annoying insects can use this recipe:
- Mix 1 tbsp. l. yeast, 1 tbsp. l. jam and dilute them with water until a thick mass resembling a cream is formed.
- Place the resulting substance on a saucer (or cardboard).
- Place these traps in places where there are insects.
Throughfor a short time, the ants on the site will become much smaller, because the yeast turns out to be detrimental to their digestive system.
The fight against garden ants with folk remedies most often bears fruit, especially if the problem has not been launched, and the colony has not grown to enormous proportions. If time is lost, then such baits are unlikely to help, and the problem will have to be trusted to the achievements of the chemical industry.
Professional products
If the above folk recipes did not help in the fight against ants, there is only one thing left - to use pesticides. These can be such chemicals:
- "Muracid".
- "Anteater".
- "Ant".
- "Grom-2".
- "Summer resident".
- "Trinol".
- "Phenaksin".
- "Fitan".
- "Death to pests".
The active component contained in them - diazinon - penetrates the nervous system of insects, paralyzes them and causes death. Among the advantages of such drugs should be attributed to their high efficiency, as well as the possibility of destroying not only adults, but also larvae. Relapse is almost completely excluded. But do not forget that working with poisons can also have a negative impact on the crop, which, under the influence of chemicals, will lose its ecological purity.
Often, summer residents use insecticidal gels that are easy to handle,have a prolonged action.
Ways to save trees
Many gardeners are wondering how to get rid of ants that have attacked fruit trees. Let's get acquainted with the most popular methods of protection. There are several of them:
- Wrap a tree trunk with sharp-edged foil, from which you should build something like a skirt. Small insects cannot overcome such an obstacle.
- Lubricate the trunk with birch tar, the smell of which pests cannot stand.
- Sheepskin wrapping with the wool on the outside has proven itself. The inside should be pretreated with carbolic acid.
- At the beginning of spring, each trunk should be treated with lime, this is a very effective preventive measure.
You can do it easier - wrap tomato leaves around the trunk, spread it on garden paths, this will help reduce the number of pests on the site.
Fighting in the apartment
Consider how to get rid of ants in the apartment. The scheme of action is in many ways similar to the methods of fighting in a summer cottage:
- Try traps and lures first.
- If they did not help, you can use yeast, borax.
- In the most advanced cases, you will have to turn to chemicals.
In the conditions of an apartment, it is best to use the Velcro traps that were described earlier. They are placed on ant trails, then you should wait a while,until the "booty" gets caught, then simply remove the tape and discard it. It is not necessary to use a purchased trap, it is quite easy to make it with your own hands, using double-sided tape and placing sweet baits next to it: drops of jam, sugar, berries. You will get a simple and effective remedy for fighting ants.
You can also use these recipes:
- Soak cookies in milk, sprinkle with boric acid and place on ant trails.
- Mix thick honey with acid, spread such baits in places where insects accumulate.
For fast results, baits should be reapplied daily.
On the video you can get acquainted with some more ways of fighting.
Prevention measures
Many would agree that preventing a problem is often easier than solving it. Therefore, the best remedy for ants is prevention. In the conditions of a city apartment or a private house, it is easy to use the following methods:
- Arrange in "dangerous" places (near ventilation, cracks in the walls, cracks in the floor) bunches of herbs unloved by insects: elderberry, wormwood, tansy, chamomile, mint. You can make fragrant bouquets from them, which will not bring any discomfort to the owner himself, and the ants will be forced to keep their distance.
- Around the perimeter of the dwelling, you can sprinkle a thin layer of pepper, which irritates insects. They almost never cross the Pepper Circle, so ants will not appear in the apartment.
- If arosethe danger of ants appearing in the house (for example, they have already attacked the neighbors' apartment), urgent measures should be taken. So, the floor can be washed using products that insects do not tolerate. This is vinegar, ammonia. After washing the floors, wiping furniture, walls, especially carefully processing the corners, you can be calm - pests are unlikely to risk entering your home.
- Having rubbed the window sill with garlic arrows, the walls next to the cracks, cracks in the floor, you can be sure that pests will not pass here. They can't stand the smell of garlic. However, this simple remedy has a significant drawback - many owners also hate the smell of this fruit. Instead of garlic, you can use a spicy oriental spice - cinnamon.
In private houses, you can plant calendula bushes, parsley, mint around the perimeter - these plants will play the role of a living barrier.
Fighting ants in a summer cottage and in an apartment is a difficult matter, often many methods are useless, while others bring only a temporary result. Therefore, you need to be patient, try, experiment, observe. And pests will certainly be expelled.
