Diatomaceous earth is the best organic way to reduce the ant population in your garden. Since I have a large acreage I don't mind if they build their nests away from my garden but won't tolerate them near my house and garden. I sprinkle diatomaceous earth on every ant hill I see and there is no more activity within a couple of days. Of course more ants move in and set up more hills so it's necessary to be constantly vigilant. Use food grade diatomaceous earth and don't breath in the dust. If I didn't use DE I'd be over-run with ants. Aphids are easy to deal with by using a spray of water or Safers Soap spray. It's not only stressed plants that aphids will be found on, some years they are on some of my roses but leave the other nearby roses alone for an unknown reason.

As long as you use a long-handled shovel, remain upwind of the load on the blade, and get your carrying and dumping done within 30 seconds, there isn't enough time for the ants to work their way up the shovel's handle. I've never been stung by hauling shovel loads of ants around as long as I don't get downwind when there is a strong wind blowing. Usually the first round of ant mixing doesn't kill out both colonies, it just weakens them. It usually take a 2nd or even a 3rd round of mixing of the survivors to completely kill them out or weaken them to the point to where the colonies disappear. As far as I know, we don't have many multi-queen colonies in the Carolinas, they are mainly out in Texas. A multi-queen colony also has a different visual appearance from a single queen colony. A single queen colony forms the typical mound we are familiar with. A multi-queen colony forms a much broader, shallower mound, giving the appearance of several closely spaced mounds melted together. But the queens in a multi-queen colony are all related to each other and their ants will fight the ants from an unrelated multi-queen colony. All I know if that there were lots of fire ants when I moved in here, and now, without the use of a bit of pesticide, they are practically non-existant on my property. At this point, all I have to worry about is knocking out the 15 or so tiny, starter colonies that appear over the summer and the occasional full-size colony that relocates in from adjacent properties where they still thrive in their original numbers.

Jessaka, Good point that we need to be thankful for the rain we're receiving! OK, y'all, I'm not as much in the mood to dance today. Our ground is still very, very wet and I want to get some planting done after the Sunday-Monday cold spell passes. It rained lightly here last night, but I haven't looked at the rain gauge yet. I don't expect that we got much rain....but we really needed it at PRECISELY that point because we had 6 or 7 fire departments out fighting 2 wildfires at the time the rain started. Talk about rain falling just when it was needed! I tilled three raised beds yesterday, working last year's decomposed mulch (now pretty much just compost with a few chunks of bark) into the soil. It was still pretty damp, but wasn't wet until you got 6 to 8 inches below the soil surface. I was racing the rainclouds....could see them coming and knew if I didn't till those beds, I wouldn't be able to plant in them on Monday. Now, they may be wet from last night's rain, but they're "ready to go" as soon as they dry out a little. There's more rain in our forecast for today and for later in the week. After watching what has been going on with the flooding, especially in Missouri, I am grateful that we received only heavy rains here and no flooding. Dawn

I donÂt know if IÂm gonna get jumped on for this one or not, but I think I may have found a way to get rid of ants! Just donÂt know for sure at this point if itÂs a forever solution or just another temporary one! When I got back from a trip a week and a half ago I was totally exhausted! As I was walking out of the garage door to get the mail, I noticed that a couple of the ant nests that are in the crack where the drive concrete meets the garage floor concrete were active again. VERY active! One of the biggest nests had an entrance hole that was close to ½" across, and there were again big piles of soil all around it. (IÂve seen so much soil being pulled up out of these holes that I have visions of pulling out of the garage some day and the concrete cracking and the car sinking into a humongous sink hole!) I stood there for a minute, totally frustrated, wondering what else I could try besides just spraying it again with the ant sprayÂwhich IÂm almost out of. My exhaustion befebbled brain went, "What if I dump ammonia on them?" I sure wouldnÂt live long if somebody dumped a bunch of ammonia on me, so I got the bottle and dumped a bunch directly into the entrances of the nests. Lo and behold, as of now the ants are gone! Since then IÂve also poured some into the redeveloped ant holes that are in the cracks of the sidewalk up to my front door, and the ants are gone thereÂfor nowÂtoo. Only time will tell how permanent my "solution" is, but it seems to me that the underground fumes from the ammonia may have done far more than the spray, which is very "local," even when sprayed directly into the entrances. I also had a HUGE ant nest under and along side of a ÂColorado Gold Gazania that was in here when I moved in. In my frustration, I also poured a substantial amount of ammonia onto and into that nest! The ants are gone, and IÂm waiting to see if the plant dies too! IÂve always thought that thing looked kind of like a dandelion, so I donÂt really care if it dies, and I think itÂll be a good experiment to see what happens if you get it near plantsÂtho in this case it wasnÂt "near", the ammonia was poured directly onto the root zone of about ½ of the plant! IÂm not suggesting anybody pour ammonia directly on their plants, but where there are ant hills/nests that are at least somewhat removed from the plants, it seems to be a pretty effective solution. If I remember, IÂll come back in a month to let you know if theyÂve come back or not. Maybe exhaustion befuddled brains are good for something! Skybird