Killing an ant mount most proficiently
 

I've got my interior ant problem pretty much fully controlled, but today I was out in the back yard watering my new grass seed, and found a huge mound of sand, maybe 1" tall, right in the center of my lawn.

I dunno if it's their main area, or if it's just 1 of 100 satellite nests, but wanted to know which would be more surefire:

- douse / drown the hole out with a gallon of hot, boric acid laced water
- surround the hill with various types of poison baits and let nature take its course.

Fumigate the nest with an aerosol pyrethrin

Find one that has a strw and insert the strw into the mound at several different spots
Give a quick 1/2 second blast into each spot

I usually quarter the nest arond the perimeter and give one blast into the center

You should see the fumes rising from the exit holes on the other side of where you are spraying

The hotter and dryer it is when you do this the better
I have heated the can up with hot water to improve atomization

That is the absolute quickest way I have found

If I am trying to impress the homeowner I will count to sixty and shove my arm into the nest to show how well it works
I believe there is an OTC on the market now call Enforcer that works on the same principle

I got the idea from an old product from Gold Coast that was basically chloroform.
You poked the mound with a stick and poured about two onces down the hole
Wait thirty seconds and stick your hand in the nest, every thing was dead
Unfortunately it also contained some cancer causing agents that forced it off the market

awesome! Thanks again ocoee!

well, home depot didn't have any fume ones that had straws! Ahhh I hate ants!!! I used to be the kind of kid who'd bring a bug outside instead of killing it, now I take great pleasure in crushing ants :)

I was in the garage painting and the leftover firecrackers from the fourth caught my eye - this is a lil unorthodox, but couldn't I just wedge some firecrackers into the mound (so only fuse is above ground) and just blow them up? Seems like it'd do the job, no?

I hate to say this, but try a Do It Yourself Pest control store

The product you are looking for is
Whitmire 3-6-10 or 565 which ever is cheaper

The firecracker might not work but they would be sorta satisfying

If it gets worse, I'll def do that. It seems to be under control now (I've got 4 different baits with 4 different scents and different poisons, plus boric acid powder lining their entry walls). Plus I'm prolly gonna do the firecrackers today. I have some of the flash color ones, that put out a blast of light when they pop. I figure the combination of heat, sound, explosion, smoke, chemicals from the cracker, should be enough to do serious damage to a mound! These mounds (yup, I found a second in the front yard!) are only about 2" wide, 1" tall, so I'm thinking that (especially if I overdo it w/ like 4 in the hole) that it should do the job. You are right - even if I don't kill a single one, it'll be worth it :thumbup:

I read, in an e-mail from a friend, that Aspartame works as a neurotoxin on ants. Yep, the same stuff many people are using to sweeten their coffee. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to. Some ants like it dry, others like it moist. They take it back to their nest, thinking it is food, and feed it to the family.

Others have suggested using Borax powder. I am not sure how this affects them, but apparently they track through it, and it does them in.

The firecracker idea sounds like more fun, but I think I would go for stumping powder, myself. More bang, bigger mess.

Gerry

What's stumping powder? And bigger mess is bad for me, because these hills are in the middle of my lawn (which has just been top dressed and sown, so I want minimal damage and extremely localized).

Sorry joeyboy

I was being a little fascetious. When I was a teenager my parents had thirty acres in the Fraser Valley. It had been logged extensively, many years prior, but the old stumps were still there. To clear the field of stumps we would bore a hole under the stump and put in several sticks of stumping powder, light the fuse, and take off. Stumping powder is a low grade explosive that comes in stick form, like dynamite, but much less powerful. Even still, several sticks would split open a good sized stump pretty nicely, so we could yard it out with the bulldozer. Given the laws in Canada now, I'm not even sure if you can buy it anymore, let alone allowing some wild eyed teenager handle it.

I just figured if a firecracker would be satisfying, a stick of stumping powder would be even better. However, I guess if you just spent a lot of dough on your lawn, the satisfaction would be somewhat limited.

Gerry

hmmm, almost alluding to aspartame being bad, not enough for me to start a debate on that though :no:

Yeah I doubt I can access something like that (i'm not a teenager I'm early 20's! Lol I know there's not much difference to adults!) here in america. Where would they carry something like that? I'm almost positive there wouldn't be access for me though.

I didn't spend too much cash on the lawn, just time, it's all seed / no sod, it was just a lot of time doing the roundup, mixing my amendments, laying them, fertilizing, seeding, and the twice daily watering (at half hour each time! So annoying!).

It is a lot of work getting a lawn into shape, Isn't it.

Gerry

harder than I could've ever imagined. I thought I did everything right
- full roundup
- mixed peat moss / compost and top dressed my sandy FL lawn to help it hold moisture and add nutrients
- applied a starter fertilizer at the specified rate (actually slightly less than the recommended, as I know my compost has nutrients)
- spread my seed (bermudagrass) at an even higher rate than recommended
- watered twice daily since sowing the seeds, religiously, haven't missed a watering yet. Some days I even do a 3rd watering in the afternoon to supplement my am / pm waterings


And yet, I've got some good spots, a lot of bare spots, and a ton of weeds (again)! It's really kind of annoying, but I'm just gonna keep on watering I guess... I guess I imagined it'd all be coming in nice and evenly, not the patchwork of grass, dead spots, and weeds that I have.

Welcome to grass growing Hell. We all go through it. Once the grass is well established go over it with a weed bar {weed killer in a waxxy bar form}to knock down some of the weeds. As to the bare patches, you just have to go over them again, and reseed.

Good Luck

Gerry