Get rid of ants! 5 tips to banish those nasty little pests
Are you seeing that correctly—is the sprinkles moving? No, those are ants, and they’ve found a short route from their nest to the crumbs on your kitchen counter. Here’s how to get rid of those unwanted visitors – without poison or any other nasty stuff.
We separate green waste from plastic and general waste, catch spiders to release them peacefully outside in the garden, and preferably eat as organically as possible. But an ant infestation is taking nature in the home a bit too far—get rid of that army marching along the skirting board. How do you do it?
Clean up your mess
Prevention is better than cure, honestly, so especially in summer, make sure your kitchen counter is clean, there are no crumbs on the floor and there’s nothing sweet anywhere for those little fuckers to find. If one ant has found a drop of honey or some spilled sugar granules, she (it’s always the female scouts that go looking for food) will tell her colleagues.
And then they all come marching in, in a conga line, to eat in your kitchen or room. They always find their way home again by following the scent trail they lay down on the way to dinner. If one such ant finds nothing, she’ll continue searching somewhere else—try the neighbours – and you won’t get that stream of little creatures in your home either.
Seal everything up
Stop them at the source: if ants can’t get into your home, you don’t have a problem. So look for small cracks and holes around the window frame, seal them up or cover them with fine mesh. They’re tiny little creatures, so you really have to work very carefully. A major advantage: larger insects—spiders, flies, beetles or even, ugh, cockroaches—won’t stand a chance after this either.
Let them stay outside
If you see ants outside, that doesn’t mean you immediately need to start using boiling water, insecticide spray or soapy water. Sweep your path every now and then, and that’s enough. Those little creatures live there, you know. A tip of a non-culinary nature: ants love tiles and stones; they like to build their nests under patio tiles, and return there every summer for six to eight (!) years. Remove those tiles from your garden and plant grass or pretty flowers instead, and you’ll immediately have fewer ants.
Confuse them
So ants lay down a scent trail to find their way from their nest to your jar of jam. Has the jam been cleared away, but the news apparently hasn’t reached those little heads yet? Then wipe away that scent trail with some fresh soapy water. Chlorine or vinegar isn’t necessary; a capful of all-purpose cleaner and the ant army will vanish without a trace.
You can also completely confuse them by scattering crumbled mint leaves along their route (an opened bag of mint tea works just as well) or putting down fragrant plants such as lavender or marigolds. Onion powder, garlic or coffee grounds will completely throw them off. And, strangely enough, cucumber does too, even though it doesn’t have a particularly strong smell.
And here’s what you’d better not do
Pouring vinegar in your garden is a bad idea anyway. It’s terribly harmful to groundwater, which is where it eventually washes away. And besides: do you really want to sit in a garden that smells like a jar of pickles? Thought not, so keep the vinegar safely indoors.
Pesticides from the garden centre are almost always poison, even if they claim to be bee-friendly or one hundred percent natural. Don’t be fooled; it simply isn’t good stuff. Also think about your toddler, who puts everything in their mouth (including ant poison), the dog or cat that licks it, or the birds and butterflies in your garden. Call me a hippie, but poison really isn’t cool.
Also read:
- What you can do on a terrace full of wasps
- Fruit flies: 8 tips to get rid of them in no time
- 10 gross things in the supermarket you don’t want to know about as a customer
Source: Milieucentraal
