Ants

[Kat_shoshin]

I know this may not belong here, but I don't usually hang out in these forums and figured I would give this a shot.

I need the ants in my yard to not come in my house. I am okay with killing them, but mostly, I don't want them in my house.

Any natural or at least non toxic yet effective methods?

[CalaRei]

We had good luck cleaning the kitchen/pantry with vinegar all over. Mop floor, wipe counters and shelves, everything. For several days.

We also found the small area they were trailing in, and dusted it with diatomaceous earth a few times. This stuff is pretty safe, I think sometimes it's even mixed in with animal food to keep bugs at bay.

I've read to plant mint around your foundation, or sprinkle cinnamon - ours came around late winter, so growing stuff wasn't an option at the time. I think this would be pretty pleasant, though.

[Mama Dragon]

Least toxic mixed with most effective is Terro brand ant killer, IME. It's Borax. There are of course safer alternatives! But I found them to be completely ineffective. They have outside traps and inside and we use both and the ants don't bother us much.

[janasmama]

neem oil. It's totally safe, botanically derived and works really good. and it's cheap. It's my favorite all-purpose pest control.

[mamaveggie]

We did a thourough cleaning, sprinkled borax around and also found where they were coming in and ran a bead of caulk along that spot and that helped greatly.

[MidnightCommando]

If you're not adverse to killing them you can kill their colony. I had to do this last night.

Last night I was turning up a corner of my yard to plan a new bed. I stumbled across a very large colony and had no idea what to do. I ran to the computer to find no-poison control methods.

I obliterated the entire colony with boiling water. Very cheap and very effective. Of course, it took some time since I was using my teapot. I poured water on the top and the next pot I dug up the soil a bit and poured more water on, and repeated. I will be checking again when I get home but I really think it worked.

[lmonter]

Yeah, boiling water is our first plan of attack with killing ants, but ours are just in random colonies out in the yard, not trailing into the house. We have two canners (one pressure, one water bath) and an outdoor cookstove, so we just set the full water bath on the burner to come to a boil in no time, cook out the ants. Let sit for a while, dig up a bit where the main entrances were, and do another pot of water. See where the ants try to come from the next day or two, and repeat. Cheap for us, and far from toxic.