Hello Everyone, You are all right. All your methods work. We all fall into the trap of it doesn't work anymore. OR 24 hrs and they are back. All I can say is you have to look at your situation and be smart. If you live in an apartment, expect roaches. If you live near a restaurant, expect rats. If you live in a house with landscape, expect spiders, ants and mice. Bottom line. MICE: Look around before you open the door, and don't leave your doors open. Make your screen doors snug around the edges. Try to screen off your roof vents or openings with metal screen. Plug up holes with steel wool. Leave traps up year round and eventually they will be gone. If not for good, a long time. An old building was demolished across our street and it took a year to get rid of them as they were looking for a new home. Been there!! ANTS: Its not just you.....what about your neighbor. My neighbor was collecting soda bottles outside his house as I discovered.......which created a SUGAR ANT SUPER COLONY. Guess where they decided to live?....That's right!!! in my garden. Borax and sugar bombs worked great. However, they were only control devices. We had to open up the ground and burst the colony, then spray. We left bombs inside and out, as well as next to all the ant ports. Eventually.......gone. But.....they are never gone, so don't be fooled. We also used bates of three Brand names....only temporary. Borax bombs worked best. ECO SPRAY Seems to do a good job. We also use peppermint and lemon essential oil as a spray to finish coat on our counters and other areas where they might wonder. Just a quick coat before we go to bed and no visitors in the morning. They hate that stuff and so do spiders. The spray mix so far does not damage anything. We use consumable essential oil...in other words we can eat it. If you need help getting some, I can direct you where to get it. We noticed in our new home that we had a different kind of ant. A protein ant as others have stated. So we left some ice cream on the counter all night for two days. Not a single ant. But, when we used a frying pan, and even washed it.....they came to visit again. Soooo............here are some tips. Ask the correct questions first. What are they going after? How big are they? What is our weather like? Where are they located? (Kitchen, Bathroom, Shower). Can I trace the ant trail outside? Do I think the nest is inside? Once you have done that...take it from there. SPIDERS: They really are a pain. Lots of trees? Lots of spiders. Lots of junk? Lots of spiders. And so on. Don't give them a home or opportunity, and you wont have a problem. Lemon pledge, Lemon and peppermint essential oil spray, keeping your house orderly, and window sills clear will help a lot. We use our diffuser with essential oils and they don't seem to appear anymore. I leave essential oils in bottle caps under the couch, closet and hidden corners, and again no appearances. Determine what type of spider you have the most in the same way you did with the ants. Sometimes they are just lost checking out your house and trying on your shoes!! (Joking) Do some reading and try different things. I read once where a couple had a super spider invasion and could not get rid of them. They were in everything and everywhere. When any pest problem gets to this level.............call a professional. ****No matter how you slice it....you share space with all of these creatures because your dwelling is on the ground somehow, and someway. You don't have to kill every spider you see...just keep it from coming in. You get what you put into it!! Bottom line. If you want to get rid of them....you have to go the extra mile. If you go the extra mile as I did when I dug up the ant colonies.......you get the big results. Like everything else in your house............its work. And it has to be done. And remember...the BUGMAN is like your Auto Mechanic.....do you think he will tell you everything!!??? It's up to you!!!!! Good Luck.

Greetings to all ... Wow, this is an old post but always very relevant, right? Actually, I recently purchased 3 pre-potted plants: Bougainvillea, Pentas Plant, and a large Kale from a popular local farm. They were not pot-bound, so I did not repot them ... Just placed them in my yard. Little did I know all three had millipedes in the soil, and all three eventually died. It was when I uprooted the dead plants that I discovered the millipedes in the soil. Now I know to always repot anything I purchase from them. This soil is very rich in organic matter, so I saved it in a sealed clear plastic bag and solarized it to eliminate the millipedes. I'm not certain if the millipedes eventually feed on the roots of potted plants, but that appears to be where the issue was. The plants just dried out rather quickly. In fact, I placed a potted succulent on top of the soil of the Bougainvillea and it lost all its root system. At least that one can be easily rerooted. Millipedes may be beneficial in natural settings but not in potting soil and definitely not in houseplants. Diatomaceous Earth (food-grade DE) does not address the issue. You have to replace the soil ... Especially so if yours is a houseplant. Millipedes do not bite but most people are allergic to a substance they ooze, which causes itching and skin irritation.

answer posted in same Q, different thread: http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3175024/horsetails-how-to-get-rid-of-them?n=1

It is a long and involved process. And will not be the slightest bit successful if neighboring properties do nothing the control the weed as well. Horsetails have a deep and widely spreading root system and can reproduce vegetatively by root rhizomes........IOW, your horsetails are most likely connected to your neighbor's horsetails by this extensive underground root system. Most herbicides do not have much of an effect on horsetails And that's because there is minimal leaf surface that can be treated and therefore uptake of the herbicide is very limited. And the heavy concentratiion of silica in the plant tissue resists adsorbtion of the herbicide as well. Cutting back to expose the cut hollow stems can help with this but it still requires multiple applications and there is no guarantee that it will be properly translocated down into that massive root system to effectively knock it back. After many year of dealing with this in both my own garden and with clients' yards, I have found the most effective means of control is manually removing the horsetails. This involves removing ALL topgrowth as soon as you see it appear above ground. With very frequent and consistent removal of anything green showing, the plant is unable to photosynthesize and this will eventually weaken it to the point where it dies off, including the roots. "Eventually" is key in this context :-) This is not a fast process and will take multiple growing seasons of dedicated attention before you have success. But your success will be only very temporary unless you can get the neighbors to follow a similar approach. And make sure you do not forget to remove the spore bearing and completely leafless fertile stalks that appear in early spring. Once these are ripe and the spores released, they wll die off but the damage will have been done. There is a very good reason that these are among the oldest living plants on the planet, having existed in essentially the same form for 350 millio years :-) They are tough customers and extremely difficult - but not impossible - to get under control.