Guess we can split hairs here all day - and I don't think the OP cared if a plant got attacked by bugs as long as it protected the OP. I did find a list compiled by someone who seemed to know something. Note, however, that these plants were found, by this person, to not be attacked by certain bugs but were not immune from attack by others. Like humans, bugs have their preferences too. If an ant doesn't like pennyroyal, the ant might still like to crawl across your shoe. Ants: pennyroyal, spearmint, southernwood, tansy Aphids: garlic, chives and other alliums, coriander, anise: nasturtium and petunia around fruit trees Borer: garlic, onion, tansy Cabbage moth: mint, hyssop, rosemary, southernwood, thyme, sage, wormwood, celery, catnip, nasturtium Colorado potato beetle: green beans, horseradish, dead nettle, flax, catnip, coriander, tansy, nasturtium Cucumber beetle: tansy, radish Cutworm: tansy Flea beetle: wormwood, mint, catnip, interplant cole crops with tomato Japanese beetle: garlic, larkspur, tansy, rue, white geranium Leafhopper: petunia, geranium Mexican bean beetle: marigold, potato, rosemary, savory, petunia Mites: onion, garlic, chives Nematodes: marigold, salvia, dahlia, calendula, asparagus Rose chafer: geranium, petunia, onion Slug: prostrate rosemary, wormwood Squash bug tansy, nasturtium, catnip Tomato hornworm: borage, marigold, opal basal Whitefly: nasturtium, marigold Insects are our friends - would be a barren world if they didn't eat harmful pests, pollinate our food crops and flowers.

Ants are good for the garden, and unless they are getting into the house it would be best to leave them alone. I would be surprised if boiling water will do much. It will cool quickly once it hits the soil and ants are not bothered too much by water in their nest. The ant poison they sell is made from borax. Instead of buying this rediculously expensive product, just get some borax from a grocery store or harware store - it is used for cleaning. Mix it 1/2 - 1/2 with sugar. The ants will eat the sugar and borax at the same time and die. Before that happens they will take some back to the queen.

Cant tell you about rats...I'm sure we have them but just not out of the city. Well I've had no luck keeping mice from my pile (living in wheat field country) but gardner snakes always move in and reside within or nearby to keep them in check. Last year I had one literaly living in my cool pile all season. The only time I've seen mint work is when I've strewn it around inside cupbards/cabnits ect. to prevent mice coming in to reside in fall around wheat harvest time...the mice scatter in all directions when the combine comes thru and guess where they go! It has pretty much worn off some by early spring and I get more mice coming in. I know the numbers greatly decreased using it. What works even better is Common Tansy and since I pulled all my mint this is what I use. I got a nice huge plant from which I harvest the leaves in fall and again in spring. The smell is extremely pungent. How it would work around a compost pile I don't know, but mine is planted about 8 feet away. One thing forsure if you try this don't let flower heads go to seed or you may regret it! It's a noxious weed here so I forsure have to be diligent. Vera

I bet your Ant is really ANTS, Digit! I don't know about carpenter ants, but I have tiny black ants in my yard that "don't exist" from mid-summer thru fall, but every spring they swarm out of "somewhere," and there are millions of them "piled up" on the grass or soil! I'll look out the window and see what looks like a little "pile" of potting soil that somehow was accidentally dumped on the grass, and when I go out to explore the situation I discover it's a writhing "clump" of ants! And they ARE tiny, so there really are MILLIONS of them. They have so undermined the soil under my sidewalk where it meets my little front porch that the sidewalk is now at least a couple inches lower than it originally was, and it's now a BIG step to get up onto the porch! From what I can figure out, it looks to me like they "thrived" for years under---wait for it---the landscape fabric and rock mulch the previous owners had put in! When I was removing all that "STUFF" I found huge nests of them, at least I found the hundreds of tunnels that went down into the, apparently, HUGE cities! They had even eaten huge holes in the (nasty!) landscape fabric! And that stuff is virtually indestructible! When I first found them I thought: No big problem! Funny me!!! At first I just took household insect spray and saturated the tunnels and soil around them. They stood there, stuck their tongues out at me, and laughed at me! After a couple years I discovered that dumping (gallons!) of ammonia down the tunnels helped--kinda! Except for the time I poured it around some HOT stepping stones when I killed the grass near the stones, it seemed to actually help the grass and plants, so I kept pouring--but there were ALWAYS more ants! A few years ago I started using Bug-B-Gon Max on the, also large, omnipresent population of earwigs I've had ever since moving in here. For a couple years they were eating more of my veggies than I was! Since that stuff was working for the earwigs I started sprinkling it in, on, and around the ants and tunnels whenever I found them, and that, finally, seems to be really helping! I'll know more for sure in about a month when they should start Erupting again! I'm not expecting them to be GONE this year, but I do expect them to be noticeably "diminished!" Hoping in a couple years I'll be able to mostly rid my yard of them! If I were you I'd do some Serious Watching this spring, so if they really are there--in a huge city somewhere far down in the underworld--you'll find them as soon as possible and be able to start to "do something" about them. The longer they're there, the worse they'll be. I have NO doubt about that! Good luck, Skybird P.S. HI, BugDoc! Welcome to RMG! Nice to see somebody around here who might know something about "bugs!" If you have time, go to the Who's Here in 2014 thread and introduce yourself. We're glad you found us!