Pesky beetles are nothing compared to army of ants

Japanese beetles have been nibbling the edges of the huge banana leaves in my garden and the occasional cucumber beetle has been caught hiding in the dahlia flower petals before munching on them.

Neither of these insect misdemeanors has risen to the level of requiring intervention, as my tolerance for bug related damage is in the moderate to high range. But elsewhere in the garden another kind of insect is in my sights, and what it lacks in size it makes up in numbers.

Ants have caused more plant damage than all of the munching beetles. I’ve been watching all summer as two ant hills in garden beds grow larger and consume more plants, including a favorite clematis, which I’ve watched get smaller by the week and have chalked up as a lost cause.

First I attempted to flood them out, both with a prolonged shot from the hose and a full-on soaking. If either attempt worked, the effect was short-lived. 

I also tried digging them out. This went about as well as you might expect and ended with an alarming number of ants somehow making their way up the shovel handle to express their displeasure with me.

Unfortunately, there is no widely accepted best method for removing ant hills from gardens.

Among the recommended methods are repeatedly pouring boiling water into the hill; adding essential oils to the boiling water; sprinkling cinnamon on the hill; spraying the hill and ant trail with a mix of vinegar and water; sprinkling coffee grounds on it; and using diatomaceous earth. 

The list goes on to include a number of  high-octane, non-selective insecticides and a less toxic Borax and sugar mix. 

You could spend a day just watching videos of attempts at ant hill removals that have backfired spectacularly, most of which involve the misuse of gasoline and the rapid recognition of just how flammable various things that might be laying around a yard actually are.

Some people recommend creating an ant civil war by taking a “scoop” of ants from one hill and adding it to another, where apparently there will be a gladiator-style fight to the death.

What I’m gathering from all this is that ants are tough little buggers, and most of these methods seem like solutions that are worse than the problem. Like most outdoor ant hills in Wisconsin, mine are inhabited by field ants, which can bite if they are disturbed, a fact I can personally attest to, but it’s nothing like the dangerous sting from a southern fire ant, which is not found in the state.

I’ll be sticking with the more innocuous methods of dealing with my ant problem. The goal, after all, is to be able to go back to growing plants at the sites of ant hills, so poisoning the soil is not only an overreaction but also counter intuitive.

But then again, the guy who millions of people watched blow up his yard in an attempt to get rid of ants probably started there too. The desire to save your plants can do that sometimes.