Ants in the lawn- How do I get rid of them the nice way?
7 tips and tricks!
Ants are great animals! Very useful for the ecosystem and really hard-working! We love ants!
Yes, in the forest and in the meadow (when we're not having a romantic picnic with our sweetheart). But please, please not in our lawn!
Ants are not actually pests in the true sense of the word. They don't eat plants, but decompose dead plant material anyway and process it into humus. They spread seeds from plants and eat dead animals.
Ants loosen and aerate the soil, root growth is improved, and so on.
In short: ants are undoubtedly very important for the ecosystem. Also in your garden.
So why would you even want to get rid of these great heroes of nature?
And how do you do it in a nice way, the way they deserve?
How do ants damage your lawn?
In our latitudes, it is mainly the black and yellow ants that can be found. These prefer to build their nests - tatatataaaa!- under lawns. So far so good. But why can this end badly for the cherished and well-tended green pride of every garden owner?
If the ants are very active in your lawn, they dig, constantly create new tunnels and build cozy nests. This is not only annoying because everything crawls and crawls, but much worse:
The roots of the lawn plants are loosened, lose their connection to the soil and are no longer supplied with sufficient water and nutrients. The lawn turns yellow and dies.
How do you get rid of the ants in an ecological way?
Of course you can now unpack the chemical club.
Or even meaner is the baking powder trick (a mixture of baking powder or baking soda and sugar), which causes the ants to perish miserably.
A mixture of beer and honey also works. Placed on a flat plate near the ants' nest, the greedy little creatures are attracted and then die by drowning in the beer. Perhaps the best way for some to die...
But we love ants, so other methods are needed.
Relocation (of the ants of course, not of you ;))
The exact opposite of the baking powder or beer method, because it is very time-consuming and perhaps a bit too much fuss for most people, is relocating the ants.
Here you fill a bucket with wood wool and place it upside down on the nest. You can also fill it with soil, but then place the bucket upside down next to the nest.
The worker ants will soon begin to transport their offspring into the pot in long rows. It takes a few days for the caravan to come to an end. Now push a spade under the pot and move the ant colony at least 30 m away from the old nest to another location.
Now you can only hope that the queen is also on board. Otherwise the colony will quickly move back to its old burrow.
Odors against ants
If you want the ants to take care of their own relocation, you can drive them away with strong scents and odors.
Ants have a great sense of smell, which they use for orientation. We can drown out their own scent with intense odors. They are confused and run away.
The following scents can be applied to the nests or ant trails:
- Garlic broth
- Mixture of camphor and alcohol
- Cedar or eucalyptus oil
- Japan oil
- cheap perfume
- Cloves
- Lemon peel
- Cinnamon, turmeric, aniseed, chili powder
- Coffee grounds
Tea tree oil and vinegar water are also frequently mentioned here. However, these must not be applied directly to the lawn and this will be difficult in our case.
Shrubs such as lavender, thyme, marjoram, sage and lemon balm are permanently effective, beautiful and even useful in the kitchen. You can achieve the same effect with their scent as with the spices and essential oils above. Only permanent and stationary, so to speak.
Fertilizing with plant slurry
Another effective method to get rid of ants is plant dips.
This also works with odors and fragrances, but is not quite as tasty. But you not only get rid of the ants, you also fertilize the soil at the same time.
Preparing the plant dip:
- Add either 300 g of fresh leaves (nettle, wormwood or comfrey) or 30 g of dry leaves to 10 liters of water.
- Cover and leave to infuse in a sunny place for 14 days, stirring daily.
- Strain and spray the ant nests diluted in a ratio of 1:10.
If you spread the slurry over the entire lawn, it is a wonderful fertilizer.
If you use it regularly, you will prevent another ant infestation.
The disadvantage of this method, as the name slurry suggests, is that it doesn't just stink to the ants.
Disturbance of the ants
Ants are really bourgeois. Anything that disrupts their normal routine completely upsets them and quickly prompts them to move. Disturbing the peace is an abomination to them:
- So let's go for frequent lawn mowing from April to September!
- Before that, you can level or scrape the ants' nests.
- Lawn sprinklers don't like the little pests either. Especially when their burrows are under water.
- If you lime or sand your lawn, you make it really uncomfortable for the ants.
Reward the ants' opponents
If you are reluctant to kill the ants yourself and prefer to leave it to nature, you can support the spread of natural enemies in your garden:
Birds (especially the green woodpecker), beetles, dragonflies, spiders, toads and the ant lion love to eat ants and make excellent contract killers.
With a near-natural garden with dry stone walls, hedges, rotten tree trunks, piles of leaves, etc., you can create a paradise for the ants' useful antagonists.
Depriving ants of food
But it also works the other way round: if you take away the ants' favorite food.
Ants love the honeydew that aphids excrete. So if you get rid of aphids, the ants have one less reason to stay with you.
6 ways to control aphids
- Spray the infested plants with a mixture of 1 liter of water, 15 ml of curd soap and a little spirit. This will quickly get rid of the aphids.
- This also works with a boiled broth of 3 cloves of garlic and 1 liter of water.
- You can also dust the infested plants with charcoal ash from the last barbecue or rock dust to scare the aphids away.
- The active ingredient lecithin, which is contained in cow's milk, combats the small animals in a very short time. Mix milk with water in a ratio of 1:2 and spray the mixture onto the infested plants. When spraying, the liquid wraps itself around the aphid and prevents the supply of oxygen. The aphids die.
- You can also find aphid control products based on neem or rapeseed oil in specialist shops.
- The prettiest and tastiest way to get rid of the pests is the basil plant. Make a tea from the basil leaves and spray it on the affected plants.
Nematodes against ants
Nematodes, threadworms, are a special type of ant.
You can buy this non-toxic preparation in specialist shops in powder form for preparation.
The intestines of nematodes contain bacteria which, once inside an insect, kill it within 24-48 hours. Again, that doesn't sound very nice. However, ants notice when these natural enemies are living nearby and bring themselves and their offspring to safety before they come into contact with them.
All 7 nice anti-ant tips at a glance
- Relocating the ant colony (very friendly, somewhat complicated),
- Dispel with intense odors (oils and spices, herbs, simple method),
- Apply plant manure (also good as fertilizer, stinks),
- Disturbance of the peace (lawn care, has to be done anyway),
- natural enemies (near-natural garden, you don't have to kill them yourself;)),
- Food deprivation (aphids gone, treats gone, ants gone),
- Use of nematodes (non-toxic and natural, usually without corpses).
What to do if the lawn is already broken?
As always, if your lawn is already damaged or dead in some places, you should quickly reseed the bare patches. This way, your lawn will look beautiful again and no weeds will be able to creep in.
With so many ways to get rid of ants from your lawn in a nice way, you are sure to find one that suits you and your garden.
