Someone will say: “Wait a minute. You tell how to remove ants from the garden? Maybe, on the contrary, how to get ants in the garden? We were taught from childhood that these hard workers - orderlies in the forest, destroy harmful insects. So in children's cartoons there is no one who would reproach ants for wrecking. "
All is correct. Because everything is complicated. Ants are formidable enemies of garden pests. And they help one of them to reproduce - aphids. More precisely, ants breed it.
In nature, there are many pairs of living organisms living in symbiosis with each other. Sea anemone and hermit crab, shark and fish sticking, tari bird and crocodile. Basically, this is protection from enemies or cleaning of inaccessible places on the body. The case in a pair of "aphids" is very special. Of course, it is wrong to think that hard-working insects specially in the literal sense of the word graze aphids on the leaves of garden plants in order to harm you and so that you go astray in search of how to destroy the aphids and how to get the ants off the site.
One of the signs of damage to plant aphids is leaves covered with a sticky secret. This is because each aphid is a living pump that sucks so many juices out of leaf cells that it does not even have time to digest everything. The excess is secreted from her body in the form of a drop of sweet “dew”. Ants became addicted to this “dew”. And so much so that it directly resembles alcoholism in humans. When the entire plant is sucked literally to dryness, the ants carefully transfer the “milk cows” to another plant, thereby spreading
the affected area. This is especially true for aphids, feeding on the juices of the roots: ants pave her the way to where she herself would never get.
And this is the only serious accusation against the "orderlies of the forest", enough to think about how to get the ants out of the garden.
A very effective prophylactic is regular digging of the site. Mixed soil layers are an unsuitable building material for creating an ant colony in it.
"Soft", humane means are designed to prevent ants from entering the beds or to force them to move to a new place of residence. Quite rightly noted: in the garden, where measures are constantly applied to destroy aphids, ants, as they say, “let out”. Another humane way to get ants out of the garden is a water barrier built from half of a large plastic bottle dug into the ground or an old tire filled with water. Such a moat should surround your site around the perimeter.
“Biological weapons” for repelling ants - parsley, mustard, tansy, anise, tomato tops: the smell is unbearable for them. The leaves and stems of these plants are laid on ant paths, they are tied with tree trunks. The same function is performed by mint and valerian sown on the beds.
There are many other similar means. But the most radical gardeners and gardeners disdain them and say: there is no other way but to destroy the ants, which means to destroy the anthill. They recommend doing this in the evening, when all ants return to their colony. After properly digging the anthill to the deepest chambers, it should be poured with boiling water or a mixture of a solution of
boric acid with sugar (1 glass - 4 tbsp.), Or a solution of kerosene (10 tbsp. L. 10 l). In the most extreme case, chemical
insecticides are used.The joy of getting rid of ants usually drowns out the quiet voice of the “humanities”. “Have you found a way to get ants out of the garden?” they say. - Well. "Be prepared for the invasion of much more terrible enemies of your site than ants," alcoholics "..."