How to Get Rid of Ants in Vegetable Garden

How to Get Rid of Ants in Vegetable Garden: The variety of ants called leaf cutters can be very destructive to a flower or vegetable garden. As the name implies, leaf cutter ants cut off sections of plant leaves using their powerful jaws. Because cutter ants live in large colonies, they can easily destroy your garden in a short time. Those who suffer from cutter ant infestations may wonder how to get rid of ants in vegetable garden.

So How to Get Rid of Ants in Vegetable Garden?

There are several methods that you can use if you were concerned with how to get rid of ants in vegetable garden: you can use pesticides and sprays to poison the cutter ant population, or resort to organic methods such as using vinegar or mint. Your choice of method in how to get rid of ants in vegetable garden is rather important, since your harvest could be duly affected by the use of chemicals. In this article, we discuss organic methods that show you how to get rid of ants in vegetables garden.

Because leaf cutter ants consume plant leaves instead of human food morsels, using poisoned ant bait won’t really be effective. The key to getting rid of cutter ants in your vegetable garden is to demolish their hills and kill off most of the colony so that they would go off and move somewhere else. You can destroy an ant hill by pouring boiling hot water all over it. Since ant colonies can go as deep as 6 to 8 feet down into the ground, you need to use enough boiling water to fully saturate an ant hill. Use about 4 gallons of hot water for each ant hill.

Prepare an organic ant repellent by throwing in some orange peels in a blender and adding some water to make a thin liquid. Ants hate citrus, so soaking an ant mound with this orange peel liquid once or twice a day should get rid of any ants that still remain in the mound. You can also use organic white vinegar for this purpose: put some undiluted white vinegar in a spray bottle and soak all exposed surfaces.

Take some uncooked hot cereal grains or dried grits. Sprinkle these over the ant hill. As the ants grab and eat these, the uncooked grits will swell up inside their stomach and kill them. The results of this method could be observed in about 2 to 3 days.

You could also try planting some mint in your garden to discourage future infestations. While mint has a smell that appeals to humans, the distinct and pungent odor of mint drives ants away. Just make sure that you keep your mint plants well- trimmed, since it could easily overtake other plants in your garden.