Ants LOVE sandy areas. I've heard that ground cinnamon can be used in the house to repel them, don't know if it would work outside or not. Might be worth a try.

Yes, they will run to moister ground, and darkness is a favorite place. Your burlap is helping the ants.

You can also sprinkle grits or cornmeal on the area. They love to eat them, but they can't digest it. I know we used grits for the 'fire ants' when we lived in Florida.

I 'binged' repel ants from garden, and got LOTS of advice, so much I couldn't post everything.

Well we have an infestation. There are winged ants (not termites, these have skinny waists and pointed abdomens like wasps) all over the strawberries - they came in with 3 truckloads of wood chips from highway service that DH spread all over the hillside near the garage. They're swarming over the woodchips, we've got hills everywhere in the lawn, and I've got the tiny ants eating holes in my raspberry leaves. They're also on the blueberries. I called a pest service - may have to skip market this year, spray to get rid of these. Hope there are no termites mixed in.

We'll probably also have to shovel it all up into a pile, and have it all hauled away and dumped somewhere - if anybody will take them.

And I thought I was getting free mulch!

Put the chickens out there!

The wild turkeys aren't helping any. I took a couple of winged insects to test station, they'll have entomologist look at them but guy said they looked like some sort of wasp, not ant, b/c of the pointed abdomen, even though we couldn't see a stinger. I was going to search on digger wasps but came home to phone message and family emergency/crisis so haven't been able to.

These may actually be beneficials, though a pest b/c of the numbers, but I still have to deal with the tiny ants (definitely ants) eating my raspberry leaves. All he could suggest was boric acid - but can't apply that to leaves, should I just bait the raised beds the berries are in?

Pouring here this afternoon - maybe they'll drown ;-)

If you haven't been able to research, here's a link for a pic.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=digger+wasp+pictures&qpvt=digger+wasp+pictures&FORM=IGRE#view=detail&id=9B6DFCA3A7016E48832C02F6F9B40803667FEA40&selectedIndex=1

Curious, why can't you use boric acid on the leaves? Just wondering.

We haven't drizzle all day and the temps have dropped from 64 this morning to 50 now and getting down to 40 overnight. I took all my plants back into the greenhouse, no sense in loosing nice looking pepper, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini and tomato plants.

We are to have 2-3 nights in the low 40s with highs only about 60.

Diotomatous earth may help your ant problem. It is what we use.

Yes DE is also an option, if you have it.

Exterminator came out to look, he says he doesn't know species but he's betting it's a "field ant" not a wasp. Waiting to hear from entomologist. Exterminator said he thinks they came up from the ground here and were attracted to warm steaming pile of wood chips. Esp. since it had been so dry here. I was thinking myself, gee, these things mus be pretty tough if they survived going through a chipper (though it was a coarse grind) and being blown into a dump truck!

He did say that DE doesn't really work on ants. We'll see how bad they get once they stop swarming. The rain collapsed their hills - maybe some drowned ;-)

The ants probably took over after it was chipped. How long ago did you get the chips? I always leave my chips for about 4-5 years before planting near them. They tie up too much nitrogen during the decomposition stage, and they decompose much slower the coarser the grind.

Not saying he is wrong and I ain't no exterminator but we use de almost exclusivly and it seems to work.

The chips only sat a couple of days before DH and DS spread them. I wanted to have a pile to decompose and just use a little bit (maybe 1/3) on the hillside and in the garden paths but DH didn't want the pile sitting there (where he told me they could dump it) so he spread it all over the hill to north of the house, more than 1000sf.

It still needed to sit for a few years, whether they were spend out or in a pile.

DH was only putting it in aisles between raised beds and over a hillside so he didn't have to mow. Once it's sat a few years and has composted, then stuff can grow in it - not what he wanted. We used a thick layer of old composted chippings from my uncle to form the base for the house garden 5 years ago. That's what I wanted to do with most of this stuff but I don't always get my way.

This post was edited by ajsmama on Sat, May 25, 13 at 15:08