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Fire Ants in Raised Garden Bed

Posted on 3/8/26 at 1:43 pm
Posted by BatonRougeBuckeye
Baton Rouge, LA
Member since Aug 2013
1883 posts
Posted on 3/8/26 at 1:43 pm
What do you use on ants in raised garden beds where chemicals would be prohibited? I dumped four pots of boiling water on them yesterday and today they have rebuilt the mound. Dudes won't go way.
Posted by cgrand
HAMMOND
Member since Oct 2009
47821 posts
Posted on 3/8/26 at 2:09 pm to
Boiling water works but you have to get it down into the mound stick a piece of rebar down as deep as you can go and pour the water down the hole

Other drenches that work are dawn dish soap, borax, 30% vinegar and/or a combo of all
Posted by LSUA 75
Colfax,La.
Member since Jan 2019
4824 posts
Posted on 3/8/26 at 2:49 pm to
I use Spinosad,have to order it.
Posted by skidry
Member since Jul 2009
3574 posts
Posted on 3/8/26 at 3:08 pm to
Treating the outside perimeter of the bed has worked for me. Mine are longer and narrower though. May not work for more square types
Posted by 10tiger
Member since Jan 2021
274 posts
Posted on 3/8/26 at 9:48 pm to
Mix a little borax and honey on a shallow dish (or even a plastic lid) and set it by the ant pile. Has worked for me several times in the past.
Posted by RougeDawg
Member since Jul 2016
7501 posts
Posted on 3/8/26 at 9:59 pm to
Tried lots of stuff. This finally worked.

Posted by Turnblad85
Member since Sep 2022
5105 posts
Posted on 3/9/26 at 7:42 am to
quote:

little borax and honey on a shallow dish


This work for fire ants though? I thought it only was for black/sugar ants.
Posted by cgrand
HAMMOND
Member since Oct 2009
47821 posts
Posted on 3/9/26 at 9:14 am to
borax does work. Another way to use it is to mix borax and dry sugar and put it in a jar with holes punched in the lid. They’ll carry the tainted sugar back to the mound
Posted by Raoul Stimulato
Hale Bopp Comet
Member since Sep 2022
2174 posts
Posted on 3/9/26 at 7:08 pm to
Taurus w fipronil
Posted by oldskule
Down South
Member since Mar 2016
24331 posts
Posted on 3/9/26 at 8:20 pm to
Ants are BAD this year....
Posted by Crusty
Baton Rouge
Member since Aug 2011
2777 posts
Posted on 3/9/26 at 10:02 pm to
Fact! It seems that as soon as I find and kill one bed, another bed pops up somewhere else in the yard. It’s like whack a mole!
Posted by Pezzo
Member since Aug 2020
2957 posts
Posted on 3/10/26 at 6:53 am to
a trick that i've used a couple times that worked surprisingly well was finding another large pile in the yard a scraping the whole pile into a five gallon bucket and dumping that onto the pile i dont want. before dumping it onto the unwanted pile i smashed the unwanted pile to get them angry. i saw that trick from some guy on youtube and tried it out and it actually works. it doesnt kill the ants but they will move out of your garden to a place you can poison them.

another post i saw was to cover the ant bed with a black trashbag so that they basically get cooked in the sun. leave it for two days and they'll be gone to a palce where you can poison them.
This post was edited on 3/10/26 at 7:01 am
Posted by CatfishJohn
Member since Jun 2020
19520 posts
Posted on 3/10/26 at 10:08 am to
We have all organic material raised beds, but I still use these because I'm not dumping anything into the soil.

Not sure they work for fire ants as well though, you may need to do a peanut butter with borax or something.

Posted by cgrand
HAMMOND
Member since Oct 2009
47821 posts
Posted on 3/10/26 at 10:33 am to
even easier is just to flood them out with a hose. They’ll move out eventually. There is some research saying that fire ants can actually be a beneficial predator in a vegetable garden but that’s little comfort when you go to work the beds.
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