Garden and Home Under Attack- Space Invaders (Ants)! Mood: Resolute
Monday, 01 Aug 11 Sunny 26°C / 79°F
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Argentine Ants have taken over the entire garden, and significant parts of this house too! We very well may have to move out, particularly because we have a baby on the way.
These evil ants could, at the minimum, invade Junior’s space, bite baby, and keep baby miserable. And at their worst, they can swarm over and kill an infant- just like fire ants.
Looks like we have to gradually abandon our garden. No Fall sowing or transplanting for me. More likely, cleanup and garden archiving.
At least we’ve gotten lots of great food harvested, before it came to this. Might save some seeds and cuttings from our current favorites, especially the Red Okra and heirloom tomatoes.
We’re a bit worried about moving while pregnant. Maybe we can move in late 3rd trimester. That way if lifting something causes Junior to pop out, she or he will already be big enough to survive.
I hate moving.
But I hate Argentine Ants more than I hate moving!!
Argentine Ants are horrible. Have a very painful sting, similar to a Fire Ant. They produce multiple queens per nest, up to 50 queens a year, and some varieties of them are even insecticide resistant (ours are). Its like being trapped in a nightmare game of Space Invaders.
‘Space Invaders’ can be a fun video game for little kids- Not so much fun when the invading bugs are real instead of virtual. Especially not fun when invading bugs seem as tough to kill as mine. And, as in the game, these Invaders never stop coming no matter how many u kill- they just keep coming at a faster rate. :(
They will invade everything, if not kept in check with pesticides applied at first sign of activity, then reapplied over and over every time it rains (weekly in winter, 2 months or so at most during dry season)- to keep them out:
Sinks, appliances, wire insulation, walls, automobiles, carpets, beds, and couches are all potential nesting sites for these- and they do sting people in their sleep.
The ants are pretty much convincing me to move out of this old house which they have invaded.
Landlord refuses to take serious countermeasures to eradicate them because that would mean a huge expense: Either knocking out the infested wall, or “tenting” the house and gassing it.
Plus the ants are widespread in this neighborhood. Besides living in wood or insulation or other house parts, they reside in soil, fencing, tree roots, porous rocks, underneath concrete patios or walkways, and so forth.
The last time these ants were eradicated from this residential neighborhood via tenting, they came right back in under a year.
So, the property owners have given up trying to fight them. :(
But I have a baby on the way and this isnt a baby safe environment- thanks to the stinging Argentine ants.
Need to find a different neighborhood to live in which doesnt have this ant problem, if at all possible.
So. I confirm that Argentine ants are not a type of ant that ‘harmony’ can be found with!
EDIT to UPDATE-
Folks- Id very much appreciate it if u could please stop asking whether I have tried Remedy X or Remedy Y… Please trust me when I say we have tried every single pregnancy safe option there is! If it exists, and is OK for early pregnancy, then it’s already been tried and has failed. Because these ants are highly insecticide resistant.
(The only remaining pregnancy safe options are very costly- ie, opening up walls, or tenting the place).
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Comments
anelson wrote:
we kill ants in our house with an organic, nontoxic mint oil based spray. It is highly effective. Also, ant traps which the ants visit then carry the poisoned food back to their home to kill the nest,
Posted on 02 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
TangoFlowers wrote:
TY anelson, very thoughtful of u to mention that, Ive used such measures successfully to get rid of, or repel some other, less nasty, species of ant. It is highly effective on most ants, but not all ants. Not at all effective on my current ant pests.
Argentine ants are extremely tough to kill. They laugh at diatomaceous earth and march right on through it undaunted. I believe even fire ants are easier to remove than these.
Our Argentine ants are also 100% resistant to mint oil… they will even farm mealybugs, thrips, and aphids on my mint plants!
All the ant traps/baits we have tried- organic and otherwise, which are supposed 2 work by getting the ants to take poison to their nest- are also about 90+% ineffective.
Our ants have decided to largely avoid eating the bait in the ant traps, because the food they can easily farm in the garden (aphids, mildews, thrips etc) or gather up from furnishings and carpets (dust mites, tiny dogfood crumbs, etc) tastes much better than poisoned bait! They also avoid consuming anything dosed with Boric Acid.
This infestation is so bad, that even the heavy duty yucky, non organic chemical solutions havent been able to get rid of it- or even significantly slow it down.
Posted on 02 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
TangoFlowers wrote:
We tried those particular organic remedies suggested by anelson, and several others including boric acid and diatmaceous earth, first thing when we moved in months ago. The organic products did absolutely nothing! :(
Maybe, if this were a light infestation it might have helped to use those products.
Unluckily this infestation is WAY too far gone for those measures, it was already inhabiting about 1/8 of a house wall when we moved in. But we didn’t discover that till later when someone came by to work on some pipes in the wall. I saw the huge nest at that time, and entered several requests for it to be eliminated, but all efforts to eliminate it have failed.
Posted on 02 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
KathN wrote:
I have to admit, we tried ALL the non-toxic methods to deal with our rather benign-yet-overwhelming ant problem, and nothing worked. Not a single thing. The organic spray worked, in that it killed the ones outside that it could reach, but it drove all the ones in the walls, in the nests, INSIDE to get away from the sprayed yard. ARGH.
I’d finally had enough and my husband found a “least toxic” pest control company. They sprayed around the house last week, and added a few traps in key locations for good measure. It takes two or three weeks for it to fully take effect, and the plan is for a once-a-month treatment, but already we’ve seen a marked lessening in a problem we’ve been living with since we moved in 9 years ago.
I’ll also admit to being relieved. I totally get your feeling of needing to move. I’m just sorry the ants are winning.
Posted on 02 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
sheepandwool wrote:
Oh no! But on the brighter side: you could look for a place with a nice, big gardening space. :)
Posted on 02 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
TangoFlowers wrote:
sheepandwool- It does help to look for a silver lining in this which is, I think, what ur post above was getting at. Despite the annoyances of moving there are additional benefits too. :)
In theory we could seek a bigger garden space if we had the option of buying a home. In practice, fat chance of garden expansion, as we are restricted to rentals. We will likely get a smaller garden space than what we have now. Anyplace that has a lot of green space tends to be a house for sale, not a house for rent.
But I am OK with a possible garden downsizing because I expect baby to keep me too busy to be able to manage more than about 200 sq ft of garden.
The new place will hopefully have better amenities for baby, such as more indoor space, more young couples in the neighborhood with babies, less traffic and party related noise, less neighborhood crime, better air, and better drinking water quality. If we luck out we also might find a place which will have high quality child care in the area, or a shorter commute for one or both of us. :)
KathN- Same thing happened here, except for a very different ending. :(
we tried working with a ‘less toxic’ pest control company, for about 6 months. The exterminators did the exact same things ur company did Because of its initial severity, and because our ants will not eat the bait in the traps, our ant infestation continued to gradually worsen- despite all professional treatments. The landlord is now considering a weekly heavy spraying with very toxic stuff (both inside and outside the home), to keep the ants from invading further. That isn’t a safe option in my current stage of pregnancy. So we actually might move out very soon now, if the landlord insists upon starting the weekly spraying before Junior is big enough to handle the chemicals!
Posted on 02 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
sheepandwool wrote:
Awww, I am sorry you are going through this, and a time in your life when you have much better things to occupy your thoughts and time. ((((Hugs!))))
Posted on 02 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
marysgardeningendeavors wrote:
omg, I have never heard of those ants, how awful! I’m so sorry you have this stress while you’re expecting :( You might mention to your landlord that if he has toxic pesticides used on your home and there are any complications with junior later on he could be found liable for it.
Also, my dad is a landlord, he would have never neglected a problem so serious for so long. I highly recommend you look up renter’s rights for your area. If you reported this problem right away and your landlord did not immediately address this serious situation you may be able to haggle for a full refund of your deposits and perhaps moving assistance. You might look up books on the subject from Nolo press.
Good luck!
p.s. have you tried Pyrethrum?
Posted on 04 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
TangoFlowers wrote:
TY Marysgarden- I did manage to talk them out of applying the nasty stuff until I am either in my 3rd trimester, or have moved out, whichever happens first. No mentioning of legal liabilities was necessary, I simply told them it was not safe for my stage of pregnancy and that if they insisted on applying it, we’d evacuate immediately.
Thing is, mentioning possible legal liabilities related to birth defects could not have worked in my favor anyway because we are in a very BADLY polluted area with an overall very high birth defects rate as a result. Horrible water quality, pretty poor air quality, etc.- so if a defect occurred, there would be absolutely no way to prove in a court of law that it was connected to the spraying.
Sadly- renter’s rights in my area are frankly pretty lame. We did look them up and they are minimal. There is no way that we could successfully haggle for a full refund of deposits or for moving assistance, because in our area all the landlord has to do to get out of trouble is document that they took prompt action to deal with the pests. And they did take prompt action- it just happens to have been a pretty ineffective action is all. Oh well, one of the downsides to living where we do. Ce’st la vie- No place is perfect.
Yes, Pyrethrum and Pyrethrin based pesticides were one of the first things we tried on the ant problem. No dice with that, either. They are Pyrethrum resistant which is why they can farm scales on all my Mums, even on Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium (the species used to produce the natural insecticide), and on other Pyrethrin producing plants! :(
Posted on 04 Aug 11 (almost 2 years ago)
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