Many owners of gardens and cottages on their ownexperience faced with ants. These small in size annoying insects can live in urban apartments, creating a lot of problems. Therefore, the question of how to get rid of ants remains relevant. We offer to get acquainted with the most effective ways that can be used by both summer residents and residents of the city.
Insect Harm
Ant colonies evoke many associations withwell-established work process and amazing performance. But the owners of garden plots, gardens, cottages, greenhouses are well aware that these small insects are capable of 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 "milk cows".
- Colonies cause significant damage to the crop, absorbing berries and tubers. The harvest of strawberries and strawberries especially suffers from them.
- They devour the petals and buds of flowers, depriving the garden of its main decoration.
- Hardworking 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, the wooden elements of the building are spoiled, giving them rottenness and fragility.
- Finally, these insects bite quite painfully.
That is why the fight against ants is necessary as ingreenhouse, and on the summer cottage as a whole. We offer to get acquainted with the most effective ways, both from a series of professional tools, and from the category of councils of craftsmen.
Benefit
In fairness it should be noted that small insects in size can bring benefits to gardeners and gardeners:
- Due to their dirt in the ground, they loosen the upper layers of the soil, making it easier for the roots to get oxygen.
- Often destroy some pests - the larvae of slugs, ticks.
But, despite these moments, insects do more harm than good, therefore effective ant products should be in the arsenal of every summer resident.
Fundamental rules
To protect your site from unwanted guests or get rid of them, you must choose one of two methods:
- Prevention. Prevent the occurrence of pests in the garden or greenhouse.
- Destruction. It is used in the event that insects have already placed an anthill among the beds and harm the harvest.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to destroy the entire anthill at once, then it is poured with boiling water or kerosene, filled with hot ashes or use a special poisonous agent.
A simple way to quickly destroy an anthill is to fill it with this mixture:
- Water - 5 liters.
- Sunflower oil - 1 glass.
- Liquid soap - 1 glass.
- Vinegar - 1 cup.
Watering 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 means that will help solve the problem, these are recipes from the treasury of folk wisdom, and professional tools. In the table we present their comparative characteristics.
| Folk | Professional | ||
| pros | Minuses | pros | Minuses |
| Do not harm cultivated plants and flowers | Can not always boast an impressive result | Even the largest ant colony will be quickly and effectively destroyed. | Use requires compliance with safety regulations. |
| Easy to use | Can not cope with a large colony | Some products have a prolonged effect - not only destroy insects, but also prevent the emergence of new | Can be harmful not only to insects, but also to crops. |
| Available | Many are able to cope only with imago, with the appearance of offspring the work will have to be repeated. | The most effective means are either very harmful or rather expensive. | |
| Cheap | The poison for the ants may not reach the uterus, so after a while the colony will be replenished with new individuals | ||
| Diverse, each villa owner can choose the right option for him | |||
As you can see, each of the means to combatants has both strengths and weaknesses. You can begin to act with the use of folk methods, but if they prove to be of little effect, you will have to take advantage of the achievements of the chemical industry. Next, we consider these methods in more detail.
Making traps
The easiest way to deal with ants -lures and traps that can be made independently practically from improvised means, or purchased at specialized points of sale. There are many of them:
- Catcher belt They are designed to protect young trees and shrubs, not only from the ants themselves, but also from their pets - aphids.
- Velcro fasten to the trunk, andinsect pests strongly adhere to its surface. The owner simply removes the used tape and destroys it. The best time to use such a tool is the first half of March. Replacing the "belt" is carried out in October.
For a homemade trap, you can use banksfilled with sweet - sugar, jam. They are placed on the site, supplied with "bridges" of straw, so that insects could get there without any problems. Get out of the sweet captivity they can not.
How to make a bait
Effective insect control can also be carried out with the help of baits, which are easy to prepare. Let's get acquainted with several options:
- The honey and sponge bait is made very simple.Regular sponge for washing dishes (you can use the old one) soak in honey, slightly diluted with water, and place in the place of insect accumulation. When small pests stick with its dense layer, it is enough to pour boiling water over the sponge, destroying them.
- В качестве приманки можно использовать almost any means: cooking jars, meat bones. All this will cause interest in insects, and the owner will only have to wait for fullness and destroy pests.
The advantages of using traps include:
- Ease of use.
- Full safety for both plants and people.
- Affordable price.
There is one drawback - they will help in the protection of individual crops, trees, beds, but they will not cope with a large colony.
Poison bait
If previously described funds attracted attentioninsects, then other recipes will help and destroy them, therefore are more effective in fighting ants in the garden area. There are a very large number of them, we offer to get acquainted with the most useful recipes.
The necessary components are:
- 1 tbsp. l Sahara.
- 2 tbsp. l boiling water.
- 1/3 tsp borax
- 1 tsp. honey.
Components are mixed, borax must be addedonly after the liquid with sugar dissolved in it cools. The bait unfolds in places where pests congregate, and must be replaced daily.
Another effective way to make a trap- mix raw egg, 1 tsp. borax, ½ tsp red pepper. In order to shape the trap, you should mix it with flour and mold the ball. The resulting remedy put in places where insects were observed. It will help in the fight against ants in the country.
No less a simple recipe is this. Required components:
- ½ tsp borax
- 2 tbsp. l minced meat.
The poison is decomposed in the immediate vicinity of the nest, a new portion is placed after the complete destruction of the old.
Yeast based product
In the fight against ants, homemade yeast-based products have proven themselves well. To summer residents who are tired of annoying insects, you can use the following recipe:
- Mix 1 tbsp. l yeast, 1 tbsp. l jam and dilute them with water until a thick mass resembling cream.
- Place the resulting substance on a saucer (or cardboard).
- Spread out such traps in those places where there is an accumulation of insects.
After a short time, the ants at the site will become much smaller, because the yeast is detrimental to their digestive system.
Fight against garden ants folk remediesmost often it bears fruit, especially if the problem has not been started, and the colony has not grown to an enormous scale. If time is lost, such baits are unlikely to help, and the problem will have to be trusted with the achievements of the chemical industry.
Professional tools
If the above-described folk recipes did not help in the fight against ants, one thing remains - to use pesticides. These can be such chemicals:
- "Muracid".
- "Ant-eater".
- "Ant"
- "Thunder-2".
- "Summer resident".
- "Trinol".
- "Phenaxine".
- "Fitan".
- "Death to the Pests".
The active ingredient contained in them is diazinon- penetrates into the nervous system of insects, paralyzes them and causes death. The advantages of such drugs include their high efficiency, as well as the possibility of the destruction of not only adult individuals, but also larvae. Relapse is almost completely excluded. But do not forget that working with poisons can have a negative impact on the crop, which, under the influence of chemicals, will lose its ecological purity.
Often gardeners use insecticidal gels that are easy to handle, have a prolonged effect.
Ways to save trees
Many gardeners are wondering how to get rid of ants that attacked fruit trees. Let's get acquainted with the most popular ways of protection. There are several:
- Wrap a tree trunk with sharp-edged foil from which to build something like a skirt. Small insects are not able to overcome such an obstacle.
- Lubricate the barrel with birch tar, the smell of which pests do not tolerate.
- Winding out of sheepskin with wool is well established. The inner part should be pre-treated with carbolic acid.
- In early spring, each barrel should be treated with lime, it is a very effective preventive measure.
You can do it easier - wind the tops of the tops of the tomatoes around the trunk, spread them out on the 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 ways of fighting at the dacha:
- First try the trap and bait.
- If they do not help, you can use yeast, brown.
- In the most advanced cases will have to turn to chemicals.
In terms of the apartment is best to usesticky hooks that were described earlier. They are placed on ant trails, then you should wait for a while until the “prey” gets caught, then just remove the tape and throw it away. It is not necessary to use a purchase trap; you can simply make it with your own hands, using double-sided tape and placing sweet baits next to it: drops of jam, sugar, berries. Get a simple and effective tool to combat ants.
You can also use these recipes:
- Soften the cookies in the milk, sprinkle it with boric acid and place on ant trails.
- Mix thick honey with acid, such baits spread out in places where there is an accumulation of insects.
For a quick result, the bait should be updated daily.
On the video you can get acquainted with some of the ways of struggle.
Preventive measures
Many would agree to prevent a problem.more often it is easier than to solve 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 such methods:
- Spread out in "dangerous" places (at the ventilation,cracks in the walls, cracks in the floor) bunches of herbs, unloved by insects: elderberries, wormwood, tansy, chamomile, mint. You can make them from them fragrant bouquets that will not bring any discomfort to the owner himself, and will force the ants to keep their distance.
- Along the perimeter of the dwelling it is possible to scatter a thin layer of pepper, which acts irritatingly to insects. They almost never cross the Pepper Circle; therefore, ants will not appear in the apartment.
- If there is a risk of ants 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 vinegar, ammonia. Having washed the floors, wiping furniture, walls, having carefully processed the corners, you can be calm - pests are unlikely to risk entering the dwelling.
- Rubbing the arrows of garlic window sill, walls nearbywith cracks, cracks in the floor, you can be sure - here the pests will not pass. The aroma of garlic, they can not stand. However, this simple tool has a significant drawback - many owners also hate the smell of this fruit. Instead of garlic, you can use spicy oriental spice - cinnamon.
In private homes, you can plant calendula, parsley, mint bushes around the perimeter - these plants will play the role of a living barrier.
Fighting ants at their summer cottage and in the apartment- a difficult thing, often many ways are useless, and others - bring only temporary results. Therefore, we must be patient, try, experiment, observe. And the pests will certainly be expelled.
