While Marla was deflowering the yard (dandelions count as flowers, right???) I decided to test something I had heard about.
We had some fire ant nests -- one under the driveway by the garage door, and one by the street in that useless damn strip of grass there.
I had heard that orange oil annoys and/or kills ants. I have orange oil, mmmm, good stuff! So I threw a handful of ounces (unmeasured) into a couple gallons of water (unmeasured) (theory is 2oz per gallon) and then got the pump spraying thingy and hosed it into their little holes.
Woo-hoo, some activity! When I knocked over the mound in the yard, fire ants boiled out and man did they look mad. So I spritzed all over the top of those to start and then poked around for some direct entrances to their evil underground lair. And then sprayed about a gallon of orange-impregnated water into it. Heheheh.
It wasn't too long before I didn't see more than just a couple surface ants. Hopefully they were packing the babies and moving to the neighbors yard.
Same thing for the garage.
I hear that a light orange spray all over will keep the little bugger away, too -- or orange peels diced up and sprinkled around the yard.
For the curious, I also have another very effective control for any kind of ant. Simply mix borax or boric acid with whatever substance the ant in mind will eat, and place it on or near their trails. They take it back home and in about 2 days, everyone is dead.
It has worked for me every time.
The insect people use borax mixtures for all kind of bug control, too. They sprayed it on my floor beams in Oregon to keep termites out, for example.
The bonuses are that orange oil smells really nice, and borax is pretty innocuous, though bunches of it are bad for your landscaping. I mean, you have to eat spoonfulls of the stuff before you even get sick...
http://www.msdsvault.org//GENERALPDF/33850-USBorax-Borax.pdf
Posted by Edwin at April 13, 2006 06:05 PM