One strategy is to use your garden hose and flush the ants out. The harder the spray is better and more effective. Continue to flush each ant hill out day after day until the ants decide to move. They won’t like this continually flooding of water.

Another strategy for ant hills is to go out during the colder part of the morning and to dig up part of their colony. Ants don’t do as well with the cold and will have a hard time rebuilding.

You can also use club soda which is carbonated water. The carbon dioxide will seep into the tunnels cutting off much of the oxygen supply. This gives you the chance of suffocating the queen which will take care of the colony.

Other methods include baiting with poisons that the ants will share with others and eventually kill of the colony. If don’t like using poisons, just use another method above.

There is a homemade ant trap that you can make to start help taking care of the problem. There are two variations of this trap. One that’s poisonous and one that’s more organic.

Poisonous Ingredients

You need about a 50/50 mix of borax and brown sugar or any sugary substance that an ant is going to be attracted to.

Organic Ingredients

You need a little bit of yeast. Add this with sugar. And alot of molasses. Mix all these together completely.

How to use the trap.

You take your mixture and put it into soda pop lids or baby food lids. Then then little lids are placed all around the house. The idea is that the ants will find the sugary substance in the lid and either become trapped in the molasses or killed by the borax.

What’s nice about the organic method is that if your child or dog happen to get into it, it’s no more than a small sugary mess.

So start making your traps and see how many ants from your ant problem you can get rid of.

It’s important to identify the difference between flying ants and termites. Termites are dangerous to the structure of your home and take some serious pest control to get rid of while flying don’t. If you make the mistake on which is which, you could end up paying too much money for pest control or doing too little to end the termite problem.

There are three main characteristics to look for in the different between the flying ant and the termite.

Antennae Difference

A flying ant will have an elbowed or bent antennae.

A termite will have a straight, beaded antennae.

Body Difference

A flying an will have a very narrow waist much smaller than the rest of the body.

A termite will have a waist that is thick like the rest of the body.

Wing Difference

A flying ant will two sets of wings that are a difference size from each other.

A termite has two sets of wings but they are the exact same size.

Other Differences

Termites also have signs like wood shavings and wings left all over the ground around the areas that they are in. If you do have a termite infestation, this should be fairly obvious.

Ants and other pests sometimes find these compost bins and will live in them. Some insects and ants in the compost is not a big deal. They will move and break down the materials for you. But if your compost pile becomes infested with ants it can be problematic.

Obviously, it would be pointless to spray the compost with chemicals to get rid of the ants because the pile is most likely being made for organic soil and not soil full of chemicals so this is not a solution.

Your compost pile needs to be hotter. If you mix and layer the compost correctly, it should be baking in the inside. Many disagree on what the best temperature is, but if you have ants all over then your compost pile is too cold. Warm it up and it will get rid of many of the ants.

Raise the compost bin. Putting the compost bin up off the ground will help keep out pests like ants. You may even consider above ground compost barrels.

Cover you compost bin with heavier materials like leaves, bark, sawdust, and peat moss. Get a couple inch layer on the top of the bin to keep ants out as well as larger pests.

One product that will work that is safe to use and safe to have in your soil when you grow vegetables is diatomaceous earth. Mix this into your compost. This is an abrasive substance that will cut and dehydrate ants and other pests in the compost. Get the food grade version as it’s safe unlike the pool grade variety.

If you want to learn how to keep ants out of plants, there are simple methods to follow to make ants not want to touch your plants anymore.

One of the most popular methods of keeping ants off plants is to used substances that repell the ants from the garden area.

Popular repellents include:

Commercial ant repellents – These do work but normally aren’t safe for animals like pets or children. If eating from the garden, you don’t want to mix your food with poisonous chemicals.

Cinnamon barrier – Ants don’t like cinnamon and will stay away.

Peppermint oil barrier – This works best when applied to cotton balls and spread around the garden or any other place in the house where ants are a problem.

Used coffee grounds – Ants hate this and a side effect is that used coffee grounds make a good fertilizer.

Black pepper – This works but cats don’t do well with pepper. If you have a pet cat, consider an alternative.

Why are ants in the garden in the first place?

One of the biggest attractors of ants are aphids in the garden. Aphids in and of themselves are pests that destroy your garden. They also excrete honeydew which ants are attracted to. The focus can turn to getting rid of aphids to help get rid of the ant problem.

Aphids can be controlled by beneficial insects. If you move your garden towards more organic methods, then you will have insects that control the pesky insects like aphids which will reduce ants.

Other Considerations

Another method to consider is to flood ant hills. Many believe that it must only be done with boiling water but the water from a garden hose will work fine. This won’t instantly make ants go away, but done every few days that ants will get the message and move on as it’s difficult for them to live in perpetually moist conditions.

Attract birds to the yard which will eat ants and help control the population in the yard.

Apperance Differences

Carpenter ants tend to be about a half inch to one inch long.  They are black in color.  It’s hard to distinguish a carpenter ant from another type of ant but easy to see the difference from a termite.

Termites on the other hand are smaller than carpenter ants and tend to be white in color.

Damage Differences

Most of the time both are seen as the same problem: bugs in the walls messing up the wood.  To an extent this is true, but there are some differences.

Termites tend to eat through the wood while their nests spreads outwards.  They get other material like mud and build their nest in the walls.

Carpenter ants tend to burrow their way through the wood.  They make smooth passages for their colony and lay eggs in these passages.  If the wood damage looks nice, smooth, and circular it’s most likely carpenter ant and not termites.

Look for these differences because knowing which pest problem to fight will help you get rid of the pests much quicker.

First of all, you have to consider the cause of the problem to be able to control ants. Ants like food. Ants are attracted to the crumbs, sugars, and liquids mostly in your kitchen area.

The best place to start is to keep the kitchen area clean. Are the counters wiped off? Are the floors mopped? Is there any visible food around? Can you see a trail of ants moving towards a location? Keep these things in check and it should help with much of the ant problems you have. Also note that since ants need water they tend to hang around leaking plumbing like under the sinks. Make sure those don’t trip to cut off their water supply and make them move elsewhere.

Another natural rememdy is peppermint. Ants dislike peppermint as it’s a very harsh and strong smell. If you ever see an ant, put a little peppermint oil on the end of a cottonball and dab the trail. This makes it so that this ant can’t make a trail back to the others, so they won’t come back in greater numbers into your kitchen.

Two more effective options are Boric Acid and Diatomaceous Earth. These are methods for killing as opposed to repelling ants. Boric acid specifically made for ants has a mixture of sugar in it to attract ants specifically. They take it back to their hive and end up killing more than just the one that finds it. Diatomaceous earth is useful to sprinkle around baseboards or even in your garden. This will kill an ant who comes into contact with it. Both serve a useful purpose in getting rid of your ant problem.