f-ANT-astic

I swear my house was built on a giant ant hill. There's probably an ant queen as large as myself, reclining on cushions and laughing about the silly earthlings trying to grow food right over her home while she nibbles on the delicacies her minions bring her from my garden.

Evil imaginary Ant Queen, I loathe you...

And because I am trying to keep my garden as natural as possible, with my organic seeds and plants and manure and compost, I do NOT want to ruin it by pouring toxic SEVEN all over the ground. (have you read the warning on that thing? you have to wear a mask and gloves, but somehow it's okay to spray it into the dirt around your plants...)

Of course, there are few organic things that seem to make ants keel over and die on contact, which is fine, because I actually want the ants, just not on the leaves of my plants, nibbling away to their hearts content.

Ants loosen up the soil, much like worms, and make it easier for plants to grow.

So I looked for a few non toxic ways to scare them out of my beds.

I have no idea if these will be effective, but here goes...

Nope, not cooking...

These are supposed to be effective. Ants hate to cross through cinnamon and pepper, supposedly, and can't eat yeast without exploding inside. Vinegar makes a yucky spray that they seem to hate as well, and hey, vinegar seems to be the household solution for just about everything.

So I lined the garden beds with a row of cinnamon and a row of pepper. And in all of the beds, I sprinkled yeast. I didn't want to trap the ants in my garden with nothing to eat and no way to escape.

I found an ant hill and sprinkled all over the top of it with yeast and pepper.

The ants moved out of that little home pretty quickly. As for the garden, I'm not sure if it was totally effective. I get the feeling that each time it rains, you should repeat the process, which could be a lot of pepper....

On the plus side, my garden smelled like freshly baked cinnamon raisin bread.

What do you use to get rid of ants? I am dying to hear some creative, homemade solutions!!!

Share, Share!