Try sprinkling some cornmeal on your plants. They eat it and can not digest it so it kills them.

Marie

Wrong...they can't eat it so they don't. ;-) Just one of those ant myths.

I'd use food/horticultural grade diatomaceous earth, sprinkled over the surface of the soil.

Thanks for the advice. I had heard that grits work and I remember that special "D" (can't spell it) soil too. I'll look at the store for the soil.

Have the ants moved into your plants, or just visiting? If they have taken up residence in your containers, you may want to try flushing your plants with plain water. You may need to flush the plants two or three days in a row, and since you are flushing the container to overflowing, you may want to fertilize after the treatment. I had problems with ants moving into container plants outside. Walter Reeves on Gardening in Georgia suggested trying simple water flushing to get rid of them. I tried it and it worked great.

Ants don't harm plants, but if you do plan on bringing them inside, flushing is a good idea. If you have ants coming inside, you need to patch the hole they are using to come inside, or your problem won't go away.

This may not be very beliveible but useing PURE GRANULATED sugar works... i know u r thinking but they r atracted to sugar y do that... Yes they r atracted to sugar, sugar that has been liquidfied n no longer n its pure form is gonna bring them in. Its not a myth they CAN NOT digest sugar in it pure form. NOTE in doing so u WILL KILL the queen n colony...2nd NOTE this is not a quick fix u do have to leave them be a take the GRANULATED...SUGAR bk to the queen ... 3rd NOTE tabout 1-3dys later u will c some scouts still searching n still taking sugar bk to the nest, its ok they to will shortly die or dissappear. Try it ive done this 5 times i would even puts some in a border around the house outside where there is a trail trt it it works on red ants too... each time i do this i dont deal with ants for about 1-2 months.. one other thing make sure the sugar doent come in contact with ANY liquid or will have a bigger infestation to kill as now its been chemicaly altered n now digestiable for those lil persistant pest

Ants don't usually harm container plants, but they can sometimes. I had a big colony move into a pot with an eggplant. Thinking they wouldn't do any harm, I left them there. They filled the pot with their tunnels, which I guess caused air pockets around the roots - the plant declined rapidly. When I noticed the plant looked sickly, I flushed them out with water, but it was too late. The eggplant didn't die outright, but it stayed weak and never produced anything else. So when I see ant colonies in a container plant, I am going to flush them right away.

I've also seen large colonies kill bedding plants in flower beds - only the plant(s) immediately beside the colony die. I've never observed them to damage grass or established shrubs, though.