ants & bulbs

patrylis@aol.com patrylis@aol.com
Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:42:08 PDT
Linda:  Insecticide recipes for ant removal should use Boric Acid (H3BO3- you can get it at drugstores)) not Borax ( A mixutre of sodium borate compounds usually Na2B4O7.10H2O-this is the laundry or soap additive)).  Anyway a pinch can be added to something greasy and something sweet.  Among other things I have used potato chip crumbs, cookie crumbs, cooking grease and sugar.  Your recipes are  headed in the right direction just put the bait somewhere you can see if they take it and wait.   It takes awhile to kill a colony.  
My main problem is the nest  just gets recolonized by the neighbor's ants so  I have to do it regularly.  Today I am repotting and picked up  two pots with ants.  Time to feed them again
Patty






-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Foulis <lmf@beautifulblooms.ab.ca>
To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wed, Jul 28, 2010 11:05 am
Subject: [pbs] ants & bulbs


Hello All,
I am having issues with the ant population in my new yard.  I have tried
very commercial product available in my area to no avail.  Now whether I
as not persistent enough or that they are more numerous than I can begin to
magine, I don't know.
Have any of you had problems with or experienced ants eating your bulbs?  My
llium karataviense moved well and I have planted them last fall in the
ard.  They were well tagged and indeed I saw signs of growth typical to
hat allium this spring.  And then it disappeared.   I've grown these
articular bulbs for years, without  fail they come up, bloom and do their
hing.  I've yet to see them affected by late (really late) hard frosts, and
e did not have one this year so that was not the problem.  About a month
go I dug down where the bulbs had been planted and they were simply not
here.  No sign of rot, nothing.  The tag was still there.  These were good
ized bulbs as well, a bit bigger than a golf ball.
I tried an experiment about 2 weeks back.  I planted bean seeds in the same
pot that the allium were and at the same time some Swiss chard seeds a
ouple of feet away.  They come up about the same time for me so thought
his would be a good test.  The Swiss chard is up and growing well, no sign
f the beans.  Do you think the ants ate my allium bulbs and the bean seeds?
Do any of you have tips, ideas, solutions to get this ant population under
ome sort of control?  I've even tried Borax mixed with honey, or peanut
utter, or sugar.  I've read and read online on possible solutions, nothing
as appeared to work.  Boiling water, while it does work (I think), well,
t's a really big yard and there are more ant hills than I can count.
orching the entire yard is looking good.
praying Windex does work on killing what is on the surface almost
mmediately however does nothing to kill off that #$*%@ queen.
Hoping for a sure fire solution.
Linda Foulis
Red Deer, AB
one 3

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