DE isn't harmful to the lungs unless you make a point of fluffing it into a cloud and then inhaling it. DE from fresh-water sources (Food grade) is less irritating to the lungs than DE from salt-water sources. You can use one of those common dust masks if you want. I've used DE on our version of the fire ant, the thatch ant. I tried everything I could think of: boiling water, vinegar, bleach, poisoned sugar water, poisoned meat. I got a pound of DE and sprinkled it over the mounds. It slowed them down, but didn't stop them. Then I found a fifty-pound bag of DE for $15 and got it. Since DE is quite light, it's a BIG bag. I took a 3-lb coffee can and coated the mounds with DE half an inch thick. If it didn't penetrate their carapace, by golly, I was gonna make 'em CHOKE on it! Well, I guess I had put it on thick enough (!) so all the ants were forced to wade through it and take it into the nest area to the queen. It got them, and they haven't come back. And I see no mounds anywhere else, either (in the past, I had annoyed them so they moved). The stuff is cheap, and non-toxic to earthworms, bees, pets and kids. It's safe to eat, and it even contains trace amounts of desirable minerals. It works by sucking the moisture from the insects' bodies, including fleas and cockroaches. If you looked at DE under a microscope, you would swear you were looking at sharp shards of glass. Some information says it takes one to three days to kill the insects. DE only works when it is dry. And because it acts physically, not chemically, the insects can't become resistant to it. To make sure you're getting the non-toxic kind, make sure it says something like CODEX FOOD GRADE. Call around to your local farm supply stores -- some of them should carry it, as farmers like to mix it with grain and feed it to their livestock, as it's also supposed to help keep flies down. NEVER get the kind that is mixed with an insecticide, or the kind that is used for swimming pool filters. Stick to the food grade kind. Sue

I used beneficial nematodes for ant control and hundreds of other types of bugs. Spraying molasses will drive ants to your next door neighbors. It probably works very well since ant mounds are always small and never seem to last long while my neighbors would have huge ant mounds and are there for a long time if done nothing. Do you have any grass at all? What did you do after you had done core aerating? It should be ONE TIME ONLY... core aerating followed by compost then keep up with quarterly feeding with soybean meal to keep the microbes from compost growing and improving the soil over time. In a few years, it should be much improved... as long as you stay away from chemical stuff. If you really want to improve the clay soil, you must practice organic meaning no synthetic chemicals of any kind at all that would ruin soil biology that is responsible for improving soil.

I moved here 3 years ago, and was determined to be organic. I didn't want my dogs running through chemicals. That didn't last long, none of the organic pesticides worked, forget about grits or coffee grounds. You'll never boil enough water to get deep enough to get them. Many nest have a number of queens, if you disturb them, they usually just move a few feet over. I've declared war, and now use both Amdro and Seven on the hills, at the same time, figuring one might hopefully work. I think my dogs are thanking me, cause they were always stepping on the mounds and I'd be picking ants out from between their toes.

Darn it. You figured it out before I got on the computet his morning, so I didn't have a chance to hoot and holler and say "No-o-o-o! Don't fall for this garbage." This hoax has been around for several years. For the record, anytime someone posts something about a "new miracle solution" for anything in gardening, there is a 99.99% chance it is a hoax or is something that is just flat-out ridiculous. Most of these so-called solutions have floated around for years and have been debunked. When I come across a new one I haven't heard before, I go to Snopes.com to see if they address it on their website, and they often do. As far as fire ants, I've been dealing with them since they first appeared in our part of Texas in the late 1970s or early 1980s. While we have better methods of managing them now, there still are few organic solutions that really seem to work. The one that works best for me is anything with Spinosad. It doesn't take out all the fire ants, but it greatly reduces their numbers. I don't even worry much about fire ants any more because, like cockroaches and rats and snakes, they are here to stay. I just try to keep their mounds out of my veggie garden and out of the areas where we commonly walk. The big ant worry now for all of us now in this part of the country is Rasberry Crazy Ants. They are real, they do exist, and the scientists and researchers in Texas (and probably elsewhere) are just beginning to study them. I hope they figure out a way to manage them before these ants make it this far north. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Crazy Rasberry Ants Wiki