Fire ants are a persistent nuisance. Let’s look at three ways to fight them off.
You should be proud of your lawn. It’s hard to do that when there are pests everywhere. Bugs and beetles can damage your lawn and ruin all of your yard care efforts. Fire ants are a persistent nuisance. Let’s look at three ways to fight them off.
Using the Bucketing Method
The first solution you can try is called the bucketing method. This helps target the queen and reduces the size of the swarm. Queens can live for up to seven years; in that time, they can lay 1,000 eggs every day. That’s a lot of ants! To get the bucketing method underway, find and dig the anthill out of the ground. Cover up the remains of the hill with a bucket. Believe it or not, cornstarch and baby powder work as deterrents. Then shovel the powders into the bucket. This can smother the fire ants and stop them from getting out of the bucket. The important part is to flip the bucket over and put the hill inside of it.
Using Hot Water
Another idea is to use hot water. Although this sounds ineffective, hear us out. You won’t have to use pesticides, which means your lawn is safer for everyone who wants to walk on it. Like the bucketing method, you can still use the bucket for this. However, one bucket of hot water isn’t enough. Instead, you will need several – three or four should be sufficient. Splashing the water will also undo everything you’ve tried when trying to fight off the fire ants. Since you’re using hot water, you’ll also want to be careful to not hurt anyone who is helping you in the garden. At the same time, you don’t want to oversaturate the other parts of your lawn that aren’t currently affected by these pests. Your flowers, plants, trees, and vegetables could also be at risk.
Using Baits
One of your options is to use baits and traps. These two defenses should only be used as a last resort if every other method you have tried has already failed. They will slow down the spread of the ants by wiping out their colonies. Outdoor traps work much the same way that indoor traps work if you have an ant problem in your kitchen, bathroom, or anywhere else inside your home.
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