Help my garden is being taken over...By ANTS!!

smartsaver2011

Please Help !

I am a novice gardener and we bought our house and turfed it over a year ago. I made a new flower bed and a paved path to the shed. Since living here I'm noticing all my new plants are being eaten away and dying..Plus If I look hard enough the grass seems to move with the amount of ants. They aren't red nor in the house (Thank god).

Nippon doesn't seem to work and I am wondering how do get rid of them, or reduce them?!

I'm getting rather upset now as I can't see me sitting on the grass or spending more money on plants as they eat the leaves.

What works?!!!!

arbroath_lass

Like you our whole area is plagued with ants. Pour boiling water inn the nest if you can find it/them. Those weed wand things also work aimed down whatever hole you see them coming out of. A few ants in the garden is no bad thing though so we just try to keep numbers down. Not that we could get rid of them all anyway.

smartsaver2011

Well it's not just a few...I have read online about mixing honey/syrup with some sort of acid/poison you buy from a hardware store. It's supposed to be mild and kills them by taking it to the queen. Try googling it, I will give it a go this week.

Farway

smartsaver2011 wrote: »

I'm getting rather upset now as I can't see me sitting on the grass or spending more money on plants as they eat the leaves.

What works?!!!!

Ants do not eat leaves, so you have another problem there

For what works, I have just listened, live, to a garden phone in on Radio Solent, the garden answers were by Brian Kidd, who was Portsmouth parks for 49 years and is well respected in this area

He answered a question about ants, and gave details of a product that costs nearly £20 but works. I did not pay much attention because it is not a problem I have

He went on to say although it works no one buys it because of price

Have a listen here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rgxsx if you want, not sure how far in it is, prog is 2 hour long, Brian,and the answer is on after the first hour

Linda32

Hi,

I doubt its the ants which are eating your plants. Any chance of a photo?

Is there evidence of them being eaten or are they dying off, it could be various reasons.

Can you tell us what plants you have planted and are dying off for whatever reason, that might give a clue

Its not very nice, I know, to put in the effort for them to die off but perhaps we can get to the bottom of the problem.

TallGirl

I had a load of ants in my raised beds and my gooseberry in a pot never seemed to bother those. Could it be slugs or snails?

blossomhill_2

Hi OP - it sounds like you have an ant problem of a similar scale to my mum's house - they ate plants like no-one's business (yes they do eat leaves, esp pansies) and when we moved planters there would be huge piles of fine soil underneath and all planters had mini nests in them

We eventually found that there was a massive, truly massive nest under the patio slabs so have had to attack on all sides - powders for easily reached areas, tipping pots on their sides to make them retreat into the ground, Nippon round wall edges, you name it we had to do it, then boiling water between all the slabs, often

We have by no means got rid of them but she can at least keep some plants now and we continue to try and control it - I envy anyone who hasn't seen the destruction ants can do - in my own garden we get nests just a metre across and we rake them into the open and the birds solve them for us, but the big ones are something else

The nest spread was about 15ft wide in each direction
Good luck , I hope this helps

PS look out for the queen ant's wedding about 2nd week in July and you will see where they emerge from (flying) and can concentrate your efforts there