This morning I woke up to Ants- not just a few, but the long trails that go room to room. It’s not that I hate ants, they are just annoying. But it’s not just ants, for some reason, my condo attracts spiders, cobwebs and other annoying types of bugs. No matter how much I clean, they show up the next day. Kinda embarrassing when people come over and they have spiders crawling all over them!
Of course I want something that is non- toxic and readily available materials, (that means right in my kitchen)- See below some great ideas on natural, non- toxic, in your kitchen, homemade Ant Deterrents.
Of course the first line of defense is no food, clean and to stop points of entry.Ā Natural Pest Control has a great list of pest control ideas- these are just a few
- Keep a small spray bottle handy, and spray the ants with a bit of soapy water.
- Set out cucumber peels or slices in the kitchen or at the ants’ point of entry. Many ants have a natural aversion to cucumber. Bitter cucumbers work best.
- Leave a few tea bags of mint tea near areas where the ants seem most active. Dry, crushed mint leaves or cloves also work as ant deterrents.
- Trace the ant column back to their point of entry. Set any of the following items at the entry area in a small line, which ants will not cross: cayenne pepper, citrus oil (can be soaked into a piece of string), lemon juice, cinnamon or coffee grounds.
- Mix a half teaspoon each of honey, borox, and aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet, etc.), in small bottles. Place bottles on their sides, with lids off, in areas of most ant activity. Ants will carry the bait back to their colonies. Important: use indoors only; must be kept away from pets and children.
- Leave a small, low wattage night light on for a few nights in the area of most ant activity. The change in light can disrupt and discourage their foraging patterns.
- Ants on the deck? Slip a few cut up cloves of garlic between the cracks.
- Liquid peppermint soap, diluted in a squirt bottle will kill them. It will also prevent them from coming back
- Citrasolve works wonderfully! Just mop or wipe with it and spread it around at entry point. ants will die in house, and won’t come back in again.
- Ring your house with used coffee grounds and other acidic natural byproducts.
- Spray bottle with vinegar works too
- Dr. Bronners peppermint soap,
- Try Boric Acid. It’s natural, safe and it works. BORIC ACID Is Harmful to Animals. We don’t recommend this if you have pets or wildlife.
- Peppermint oil–a few drops in a spray bottle of water.
- Pouring lemon juice around areas ants frequent
- Baking soda can deter ants – pour a solid line in areas of activity and they won’t cross it.
- A puree blend of orange peel and water can be applied to an area to discourage ants from crossing.
- Baby powder stopped them dead in their tracks.
- Use a piece of chalk to draw a line over trails – again, the ants won’t cross it. Chalk also has the advantage of being able to be used on vertical surfaces
- We up here in alaska work alot with carpanter ants. i use the original listerine the brown one. full strength and we spray it in there tracks and this kills them. I also find that they do not like the pepermint castile soap.
- Several readers have had success with using powdered yeast. The ants usually disappear within one day!
- A few readers wrote in and said they used Bay Leaves.
I have found a simple method for getting rid of all types of ants. The details can be found at clearblogs.com/getridofants/. I hope that you find this useful.
I just got done spending over $900 on repairs from damage done by carpenter ants in my home. If you see ants in your house you better take care of quickly.
Mike, that is horrible!
We are building a garden and found this very useful. You can follow our gardens growth and learn more about sustainable living here http://greenlifepages.com
Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Can’t wait to try this. Thank you
Remember Borax is poisonous to pets … mix it with honey.
Aspartame works very well … mix with 2 parts honey and 1 part aspartame.
To kill ants instantly, try using Windex or similar glass cleaner. Kills them dead in their tracks, but doesn’t deter them from coming back later.
The honey is what caused the aspertame to work ! My husband puts our popcans in the garage until there are enough to take back. My diet pop cans NEVER have ants in them, but his non-diet popcans always do! Yellow jackets are also attracted to regular pop but not my diet.
also you can use grits(dry)
they take it back to the nest and they cant digest it and it swells so poof they explode.
heres a npother one and i have tryed and it woirkd too for ants 1 cup of iceing suger and about 1/8th of borax mix well and put near the ant hill and near any enterance to yr house and it stop then and also they will take it back their home and slowly get rid of the nest of the ants for good
Sprinkle corn meal around the ant hills. I clears out a colony quickly.
The BEST insect deterrent I have found is Borax Laundry soap…sprinkle around the inside perimeter of your home, where ever you see an entry way, and I tell you, it stops most dead in their tracks! GREAT for flea infestation…sprinkle on carpets let it set for a while…they’re gone…the stuff actually dehydrates bugs.
Hello,
On our island here in the tropics, the carpenter ant was introduced about 10 years ago. By accident! But now they are everywhere and eating everything in site. We need a sure fire way to kill them off without harming the land in the mean time. Stopping their tracks only works for a little while. They are pretty resourceful and will just find another way around, or underground to another food source. They have killed off any veggies I’ve tried to grow, and now our citrus trees are dead. I need some serious advice!
Interesting to note the use of aspartame. It kills them and they aren’t attracted to diet soda….think what that does to humans.
I am writing from South Africa. Thank you for your advise on “Ants”. We have problems with tiny black or red ants especially where we put our dogs’ food bowls. We place the bowls on white paper (as it is easy to spot the ants) and put scouring powder (in SA it is called VIM) around the base of the bowls to prevent the ants from getting into the food bowls. I will certainly use some of your recommendations.
If they’re just normal ants, I just leave them alone & let them walk their walks because in a day or 2 they’re usually gone anyway, no harm done; to me or them. The long treks are usually a sign of rainy weather arriving within the next day or 2 and so they move to higher ground so they won’t get washed up/out/drowned. I used to watch this phenomenon at my mom’s cottage. They always made these long trails up the outside or inside walls, from ground to roof/ceiling; the next day or so, it would rain. On the next dry patch of weather, they would walk in long rows back down again. Clever little things. I don’t have the heart to kill them. What for anyway? My Mom’s cottage is still standing and as charming as ever. No damage done. š
Equal amounts of icing sugar and baking soda. Works great. For lawn infestation of ants, buy nematodes, usually at nursery.
Diatomacoeous Earth. Best thing ever. Get food grade and use it on your pets for fleas too. Google it and see…
These are all great!! Any natural deterrents for roaches? We have a few empty houses in our neighborhood, and the “word is out,” so we get several nasty party goers per week traipsing through our house. Ants are only a fraction as embarrassing as roaches when you have company. Any help would be great!
A spray bottle with vodka will do it. Also kills flies, spiders, moths, and roaches. Vinegar will keep ants away. Wipe anything near where ants come in down with a half/half vinegar and water solution and also spray it into the cracks where they’re coming in.
Outside, use diatomaceous earth on anthills and ant colonies in sidewalk cracks. It works extremely fast and if you have a swimming pool, you already have some! Available at pool supply shops.
I had ants crawling in a vent. I sprinkled cinnamon all around an sealed the vent with plastic and they have never come back
Tansy is a great ant (and other insect) repellent. I grow some outside my back door and if ants start to come in the house, I pick some leaves and lay them where the ants are congregating. No ants! Works after it has dried too.
I have a butterfly garden with the Monarch staple milkweed…what can I use outside that is non toxic that will help me get rid of the ants..they eat the eggs and can kill young caterpillars…I also have aphids which do a ton of damage so if you know of a double whammy approach I would love it!!!! THANKS
cinnamon oil sends them away and they dont come back
I use diatomaceous earth. It is safe for all animals, people, even babies. But it kills all bugs & flys. It does it mechanically, not chemically. My family take it every day & so do my dogs & horses. Wonder stuff.
It is interesting to me that we humans almost always think of killing as the first choice if anything inconveniences us. That is not always an inappropriate choice, but it often may be. We get ants coming into our home. They do cause problems because we have 2 cats living with us and the ants get into the cat food. Then the cats will not eat it. And they sometimes cause other problems.
I had heard that in some indigenous societies in Southeast Asia ants are discouraged from entering the homes by putting out something they like, as an offering that is placed outside of the home. Then the ants seem drawn to the offering and seem to prefer it to entering the home. I am told this works really well. The timing has been right for us to try this, as we currently have quite a population of ants in our home. So I have put out a few bowls of honey, just outside the house. It is too soon to know for sure, but it seems like it may be working. Hazah!
I just started having ants that fly. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
I havent had roaches or tiny water bugs in my house in over 2 years. All i did was put out bay leaves.
We use horse apples to get rid of spiders and roaches. You just cut them into pieces, and place them in your storage area, shelves, etc. I don’t what they don’t like about them but they work!!!
I wish there was a picture on this post so I could pin it!
I found that potato peels mixed with liquid garlic and liquid mint, and cayenne pepper mix together let sit for 30 min and sprinkle them around and in 1 hr you will see no ants. My grand daughter and I tried several things this is the one that really worked and that has been 3 wks and not one ant
I was wondering what would be a good home ade remedy to get rid of cockroaches and bed bugs alot of people say you cant get rid of these bugs is it true
Ants are wondrous creatures.
Although some species, like the carpenter ant and the stinging fire ant, are considered pests, generally ants are beneficial. Most ants nest in the ground, digging a labyrinth of tunnels that allow air and moisture to get to the roots of plants. The leaves and insects brought into the nest decay and fertilize the surrounding plants. Many ants are predators and feed on insects that attack lawns and gardens, and in the process of gathering food, they often pollinate flowers and distribute seeds. Before you poison them, consider that the only reason they want to invade your house (except for the carpenters) is that theya re looking for water. There are high frequency sound makers you can plug in, it drives them away. There are so many ways to prevent their entry without killing them. PLEASE reconsider the harm being done by wiping out these harmless and beneficial insects.
There is a plant called tansy that works well.
Stir this all together and allow for it to stand for around an hour.
Take the trash out of your home each night and put it outside.
The guineas are reasonably well-behaved in a garden while chickens are often destructive to the flower
beds and garden.
I have tried leaving cloves out, it seemed 2 help a little bit, but u have given me some more ideas 2 try. I’ve been having the little house ants; we call them pee ants, anyway, they were everywhere! & my son has asthma so spraying poison wasn’t going 2 work. Thanks 4 the info! š
To rid ants in cat food bowls,fill a shallow flower pot drip plate with water,sit cat food bowl in side of it.Ant’s won’t go in the water.
Cornmeal…just plain old cornmeal…they can’t digest it. Sprinkle where you see the ants and they will take it back to the nest. Kid and animal friendly!
I have used grits. Instant, quick cooking or regular grits will all work. Sprinkle around the entry point or the top of the ant mounds and they will carry them back down into the nest and share them. Once they drink liquid the grits will absorb and expand killing them in the process. I’ve used as little as a tablespoon of grits on a fire ant mound and stopped seeing activity around it. Grits are not poisonous so you don’t have to worry about where you use them and even if they attract more ants they will soon die off after eating the “treat” you left out for them.
I have thousands of ant hills in my front and back yard. These tiny creatures have begun to eat the bottom of my above ground pool . Had a specialist come over on the fall and put over 100 patches in the 3 year old liner. He stated that some liners now are being made with a something that ants love to eat. This had become quite expensive first constantly filling the pool up, paying for the specialist and then putting down ” animal and child safe products” that seem not to have worked at all. I will gladly try the corneal, grits and diatomaceous earth since I already have the last product I will try that first. How much do I sprinkle around the ant hills? Please, any advise will be appreciated since we are now on a fixed income and cannot afford pricy products. Thank you!
I’ve always find grits to work. The ants eat it and swell up
I sprayed diluted Dawn on ants once. I won’t do it again. I stood there and watched them to see what effect it would have. It was horrible and slow. No!