Emma, Have y'all been dry? I get lots of fire ants in my raised beds when all the ground outside the garden is dry as a bone. Of course, I also get them in the raised beds when we have a ton of rain (which is rare these last few years) and the ground is wet. In those cases they move to the raised beds to get above the soggy soil at grade level.

Hmmm. You're not pouring boiling water on a place where there's plant roots are you?

For fire ants, I use an organic fire ant product (non-organic ones usually are not labeled for use in areas where edible crops are being raised). The one I'm using now is by Ecosense (which I think has been purchased by Ortho) and the active ingredient is spinosad. I used to see it in stores, but couldn't find it in a store the last time I needed it, so I ordered it online.

For long-term improvement in the ant problem, add dry molasses to your soil. It increases biological activity in the soil and that makes the soil less attractive to fire ants and likely to other ants as well. They prefer poor soil with low biological activity.

I only treat fire ant mounds in the veggie garden if they are the imported fire ants. If they are the native fire ants, I leave them alone because they attack the imported fire ants.

Right now the only place I've seen fire ants in the last couple of months is on the edge of the garden right along the fence line. It isn't even raised beds at that lower end of the garden, but it is poorer soil than the rest of the garden. In all the raised beds that got a lot of compost added to them in late winter or in spring, I haven't had an ant problem....yet. The ants might be congregating at the low end of the garden because water drains downhill, so that area often has soil with a little more moisture than areas of the sloping garden that sit on significantly higher ground.

There's some reason the ants are right where they are. I'm guessing it is for moisture or food. Also check those plants for aphids. Some ants farm aphids so you'll find them in the same general area together.

Dawn

Dawn,

The ants seem to be right on the border of the bed and ive been very careful to not get within a foot of my tomatos with the boiling water. I dont know what kind of ants they are, i tried to get a pic but they move so darn fast im not sure i got a good enough pic. I will email it to you since i cant post from my ipad.

We are very dry here. Weve had a few good rains, but not nearly enough and the ground is very very dry.

The only thing ive found so far are the white flies, not any aphids, although i dont know what an aphid looks like. I will google that immediately.

I amended the soil with dried goat poop and some rich compost a month or two before planting so im sure they love that soil, and it is very dry so maybe ive just made a very hospitable environment for them?

I read somewhere to add magnesium amd phosphorous to the soil?

I dont spot any mounds, i think they are using the entire bed as their mound. So far they seem to be staying on the edges, im just worried about them eating or damaging the roots of my tomatos amd herbs. Will they do that? Should i just let them be? I will definitely order the ortho product if i need to use something, my little bed is so close to my house i hate to get an ant invasion going.

Also, where does one get dried molasses?

I will email you with the pic i managed to get.

Thanks

Emma

Emma, Maybe there is something in that rich compost they are eating? Since they looked too large to be fire ants in the photo you e-mailed me, they may not live in mounds. They may live underground like many other kinds of ants do.

Because of your allergy issues, I'd be careful around them. You might be allergic to the ant bites and not know it. If they aren't eating plant roots or climbing the plants and creating some sort of problem, you could let them be, but be careful when working around them. Just google and look at photos of aphids. You can have them in many colors. I don't see them that often but when I do, they tend to be green. One of my friends often has pink or red ones. Ants farm them, herding them around and harvesting their honeydew. Often, when ants pop up out of nowhere, they are farming the aphids on your plants. Check the undersides of leaves for them. At this time of the year, they can be on anything but particularly on cool-season crops stressed by the increasingly hot weather.

Dried molasses is available at some feed stores and also at some full-line nurseries or garden centers that carry a large selection of organic products. It is considered a biostimulant and, honestly, plain white sugar probably works just as well. If you just added a lot of compost, though, that alone should make your soil healthy and biologically active, so I'm not sure you'd see any additional benefit from adding dry molasses.

Since y'all are dry, I think it is mostly that the ants are looking for the most hospitable environment that they can find, and it appears they think your garden is it.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: The Use of Dry Molasses in Gardening