have you seen my thread!??:
Hints & Tips For Your Garden
ANTS
Pros and cons. Gardeners usually consider ants to be pests. Ants can loosen soil around young plants, causing them to die. Some species shelter and protect aphids, whose honeydew they feed on. on the positive side, ants can improve air circulation in heavy soils, and there burrows improve water drainage.
To get rid of a coloney, cover the ant hill with a large flower pot whose drainage holes have ben plugged with a cork or tightley wadded plastic wrap. Heat a bucket of water to boiling and flood the surrounding soil, reserve a few galons of the water. Wait a minute or two for most of the ants to find shelter in the pot, then turn it upright and pour in the remaning water.
A mash of hot chilies and water will keep ants away. Another mix of homade repelent is a mix of orange peels and water pure'ed in your blender and poured directley into an anthill earley in the morning.
Instant grits work too. Grits expand in ants' bodies and finish them off. Leave the grits in piles near the insects pathways.
Inside the house, safely repel ants by sprinkeling pennyroyal, camphor, clove oil, tansy, spearment, or broken eggshels on a dish in closets and on shelvs.
Boric acid mixed with sugar is an effective ant poisn~but onley in gardens with no children and pets. Spred it on a piece of wood or stone near the nest, then cover for protection from rain. The foragaging ants will love it
Wrap bands of paper coated with nondrying glue around the base of fruit trees to prevent ants from reaching the fruit. The easy way is to simpley fold in half a sheet of adhesive paper~the kind used on shelving~ with the sticky side out.
Ants hate aromatic plants like ment, lavender, chives, and garlic. Install these along borders or spot them randomely in clumps and pots around the garden.
Creat an ant barrior around plants, on front steps, and between garden rows with sprinkeling of agricultural lime, bone meal, or powerded charcoal.
Fire ants, better known in the south as red ants, are tenacious little creatures with a vicious sting. They are especally partial to sun and sandy soil. If your yard is prone to infestation, provide shade with vine-coverd trellises in a part of the garden where sun loving plants wont be affected. And if you keep compost, store it in closed bins so that fire ants cant build there hills.