Yikes! Ants!

[haglered]

I wonder if you sprayed the wood very heavily with white vinegar, perhaps even cut 1/2 with Water if that would get rid of them. I mean really soak the area.

There is a gardner called Mike McGrath who has a show on NPR called You bet your Garden. I'll bet he could make a good recomendation. He is totally against pesticides and other dagerous chemicals being used on gardens and the like. http://www.whyy.org/91FM/ybyg/index.html

 

[moltenone]

burn it don't worry about the ants.


mark

 

[4t64rd]

What about steam? or boiling? Wood won't burn, ants might get outta dodge when it gets a little warm in there.

 

[realsmoker]

I was recently gifted a fair amount of Plum cut last year and left out to season, some of it had those little red ants in it. I put the infested wood in a black contractors bag and left it out in the sun for two weeks, opened it up and most of the ants were dead, the few that were alive no longer were carrying eggs, so the eggs must have died, oh and I dusted it with Diatomaceous Earth totally nontoxic and hell on all ants.

 

[Sal Barsanti]

I just pulled 3 large paper leaf bags out of my shed- filled with apple sticks that I split last fall.

I was going to cut them down to chunks using my table saw. I quickly discovered 100s of large black a ts in 2 of the bags.

I dumped them out and tried spraying:

1- dish soap/water mix
2- Vinegar/water mix
3- Borax/water mix

The 3 rounds of spray might have slowed the ants down some, but it didn't kill them immediately

After a while I proceeded to cut the wood without incident.

Now do I check the bags of oak and cherry wood in my shed?

 

[JWFokker]

Make simple syrup (half sugar, half hot water), add borax. Dispense into bottle caps. Place in multiple locations around ants. They'll all be dead in a week.

Or just buy Terro brand ant killer. Same thing. Sugar water borax mix. They have to eat it. No use spraying.

 

[Sal Barsanti]

Updating this post re: large black ants...

After dealing with the initial ant issue in my yellow apple wood bags, it seems to have fixed the issue. I have looked through the oak and cherry wood bags, no ants.

I think I'll set up cement blocks and keep all wood bags off of the shed floor.

* Just cut up a nice maple that fell in a neighbor's yard. Will add that to the cooking wood menu.