ANTS!!!!
By beccajoI got an ant problem in my apartment. I've tried some of Chris's earlier suggestions, but with no success!
Mostly it's my own fault, I didn't notice a honey spill that had seeped under my coffee maker until a few days ago. I lifted up the coffee maker and there was a swarm of dead and dying ants in a pool of hardening honey. Not a bad way to go for an ant, but still. YEESH! But now I'm house sitting for my parents, and they have those really big black ants everywhere. Still, it could be worse........
But I make sure there's no food sitting out or dirty dishes for them to eat, I've been also coating paper towels with vinegar and placing them in their path, that seems to work well, but my place smells like PICKLES. Anyone got good 'green' ant fighting strategies, aside from getting myself one of these guys??? The pepper and baby powder worked for a few days, but then, they came right back.
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beccajo's blog (138 posts)
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Member since: 11/08/06
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I'm obsessed with making the world a prettier place. I make my living as a production...
beccajo
wow! thanks everyone!
strangely, after my house sitting gig, i returned to an ant-free apartment!
i did get a basil plant, a HUGE one, and it's now living in the kitchen. i wonder if that had anything to do with it......
but if they return, it sounds like borax is the solution. ha!
kestrel
Boric Acid is probably the best way to take care of ants. The easiest way to get boric is, as KATHC wrote, in Borax. Growing up we would get these itty bitty ants coming out in the house and my dad would take little mason jar lids and put a bit of sugar and boric acid on it and the ants would stop.
Borax is also great for fleas. We never had fleas on our cats until we ripped up carpeting last year to put in new flooring. The carpeting had been installed by the original owners of the house who had dogs, and, it seems, fleas. Apparently flea eggs can lay dormant for years until they are distrubed by something like ripping up the carpet...yippee! Anyway, after much research online we found mention of using Borax, which based on my ant experiences as a child made sense. Sprinkle Borax over your carpetting and work it in. When the flea eggs hatch the Borax acts as a desiccant and dehydrates the nasty critters and they die.
Boric acid is actually a real cool item. Not only can it kill ants, fleas and other insects, but you can dillute it to use as an eye wash, clean scrapes and cuts, it's used in nuclear power plants to slow down the rate of fission and on space shuttles for heat ruduction.
Rabbit
See also...
http://marcsala.blogspot.com/2008/01/me-against-ants-one-green-way-to-keep.html
Pepermint oil. Not ants AND no pickle smell.
kathc
We tried something we found in the Daily Green newsletter.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/organic-parenting/nontoxic-ant-control-55042901?src=nl&mag=tdg&list=dgr&kw=ist
In case the link doesn't work, here is what the article said:
"He suggested we put out a bowl of sugar water with a teaspoon of dissolved borax in it. I never thought this would work, but I was desperate and pregnant, so I did it anyway. He said the ants would be interested in drinking the sugar water, but slowly poisoned by the borax, and once they got the message back at home they'd stop coming to visit our kitchen. It definitely required some patience, but when it started to work four days or so into the experiment, I was really satisfied. In years past I have tried pheromone traps, stuffing holes and being obsessively clean, but nothing ever worked this well. "
We tried it assuming it would be yet another thing that didn't work, but amazingly, it did. Within the first couple of days the bowls were full of ants, and they must be getting the message because we rarely see any now.
tmgeorgo
I've tried several ways to get rid of ants in my kitchen (tiny black ones that like greasy things, not sweet things) and found that those raid double control ant baits worked best. I just put the baits right in the areas they were hanging out and they stopped coming back a couple days later.
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