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Disclaimer: Gardenseeker is a free resource, with everything from gardening tips to product reviews. Wait for a dry spell and apply it directly on the ant hill and surrounding ants with either a watering can or knapsack sprayer. Ants eat the diatomaceous earth, and it dehydrates them from within, slowly killing any ant that ingests it.David Floyd has 20 years of experience working as a pest control technician as well as running his own pest control company.

DE is a unique pest killer because it cuts into insect exoskeletons and dries them out, killing them.This trick works pretty well, but you may have to replace the cotton balls several times before all the ants are gone. Ant-Repellent Plants: Plant ant-repellent herbs like mint, basil, or lavender around your home’s entry points. It consists of a sugary bait specially formulated to appeal to black ants - worker ants take the sweet bait back to the nest and feed it to the whole colony.

This is widely used as an insecticide, and the product is 100% natural, safe for pets and children, and suitable for organic gardening.If nematodes aren’t applied during rainfall, it’s best to irrigate afterwards, keeping the soil damp for a minimum of two weeks. Ants are so wired to work together that you could even think of an ant colony as one big superorganism. Regular feeding, mowing and proper watering can make your yard less appealing to certain ant species. The good news is you don’t need a bucket of nasty chemicals, you can leave the boiling water safely in the kettle, and you don’t need to wait forever for my preferred method to work either.