A common enemy
Fire ants are a scourge. If you don’t know what a Fire ant is, welcome to Texas and we accept that you got here as quickly as you could. Thanks to a lot of study, effort and money thrown at figuring out how to deal with them, there are several products that do a fantastic job of killing these bad boys. We battle them constantly. They love to get into the potted plants since the soil in the plants doesn’t stay soggy like the ground can and it’s easier for them to dig in (apparently they are lazy when we give them a opportunity to be). We have 3 produces that we use and recommend. Greenlight Fire Ant Control with Conserve, Natures Guide Fire Ant Killer (my personal favorite) and Molasses (just one more benefits of a great product). Use them all or just one and you will love the results.
Go fishing
Greenlight Fire Ant Control with Conserve is a bait that has Spinosad in it. Spinosad is an insecticide derived from a fungus. A 1 pound bag covers over 10,000 square feet and does not need to be watered in. This takes time to work, because it is a bait and the workers need to feed it to the queen, before you see the colony really start to collapse. An important aspect of using baits, is to avoid disturbing the mounds before you apply them. Apply baits 2 or 3 days after mowing and NEVER stir up the mound, before applying the bait. Fire ants are not stupid and will associate the disturbance with the bait and carry it away from the mound instead of into it. Sometime soon, this Greenlight product will disappear, along with a bunch of other Greenlight products. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (owned by Syngenta…makers of Atrazine) bought the Greenlight company and are dropping many of the Greenlight products from their line up. We will be switching to another brand with a similar product, as soon as we run out of what we have on the shelf.
Go hunting
Natures Guide (a Texas company) Fire Ant Killer is an organic product that can kill an entire mound in 15(+/-)minutes. The label says you can use it wet or dry. I think it works better wet. Mix 4 tablespoons to a gallon of water and pour a little around the mound, then the rest straight into the mound. When it has been really dry, it can take up to 3 gallons of mix to drench the mound. After a good rain, you will use less because the mound is partly flooded from the rain and their brood is near the surface. (I put a tablespoon of this product into a quart of water in a spray bottle and when I am tending my veggies, squirt the bugs I don’t want around…but, I’ll deny that, since it isn’t on the label.)
Stay sweet
Once again we return to our beloved molasses. Personally, if molasses ran for president I’d vote for it. Since there is no money in studying molasses, there is only word of mouth evidence that it works to get rid of Fire ants. Fire ants hate sugar…sugary baits just don’t work and molasses is a simple sugar. It doesn’t kill them, it makes them pack up and move…which is good enough for me. You can spray molasses or apply a “dry” molasses (molasses sprayed on a soy chaff). The liquid is far mor economical than the dry. A gallon can cover up to 1/2 acre for under $15.00 (what a deal!). There are several theories about what makes them move, from the sugar itself to increased microbial activity…who cares? They leave.
The best approach may be using all 3. Hit the mounds you see, apply the bait to get rid of the ones you don’t and spray molasses a couple of weeks later, to move the stragglers out. For under $50.00 you can kill them quick, kill them slow and send them packing…revenge is sweet.