03 March 2009
Ant Cemetary
Well, we ran into a little problem with our vegetable boxes. One of the boards was ridiculously hard and I'll have to scrap it, meaning another trip to HD. I also used the last nail on the last box I put together, which also means another HD trip. (well I'll get them both on the same trip of course) The last problem was the fire ant colony right in the spot of one of the boxes. The way we usually deal with fire ants is to get a big pot of boiling water and pour it on the mound. Then we use the hose to destroy their tunnels and hit with another pot of boiling water. Usually this will get them to move, but they usually come back. After two days and four pots of water, the and casualties were in the tens of thousands, but they were still fighting for survival. Death from Above (aka, boiling water) had failed to root out the most hardened and well dug in ants, so I had to resort to biological warfare. Keep in mind however that we plan to grow food on this spot in which I am using the most ruthless eminent domain tactics. So what did I use next? Instant Grits! You heard me correctly, Instant Grits. But not any old instant grits, Hill Country Fare Instant Grits. Apparently when the ants eat them their digestive juices cause the grits to expand and well, bye bye ants. So far it looks like they are going for it, and I see many more dead ants piled up than yesterday. But it's hard to tell if its from the grits or residual from the 'Napalm' Death from Above. Anyway, I just took 3 packets and poured a circle around their mound and they are going after it. We'll see soon how well it works.
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17 comments:
I got just one acronym for you...PETA.
Be afraid..be very afraid.
So where'd ya get the grit attack thing from? Keep us posted, cause I'd really like to know if it works.
This isn't another rum/turkey thing is it?
I'm thinkin there may be another sayn brewin here...
I'm not sure where I found it. I just googled organic ant killer and clicked on the first thing that looked decent and there it was. You need to do it on a dry day though, the moisture would cause the grits to expand prematurely. But seeing how we had some wildfires about 10-15 miles from here due to the drought conditions, I think we're good with the dryness. I think tomorrow will give us the true results, there were lots of dead ants piled up, much of this was due to the water though. There were also many dead ants in the grits as well. But I'm not sure if they were there because of the grits or not. There was certainly a lot of activity which is usual after I bombard them with the death from above. We'll see if the grits really work soon.
Whenever someone bites off more than they can chew, "It's like givin' grits to ants."
That Obama's got his hands full with this economy like givin grits to ants.
I'm all itchy now.
Well there were certainly more dead ants today than over the past few days, but they were not totally rooted out. I poured another packet on 'em. Tomorrow I'll consider another few doses of death from above.
T got an ant farm about 4 or so years ago. I don't know if we got "fire ants"..not sure what those are exactly, but they were red and there was a warning that they bite. I just remember dropping a couple and wigging out. Yeah, I didn't care for the ant farm. It worked for a little while, but I wasn't big on feeding em.
No fire ants in Mich, eh? Yall'll lucky. They sting pretty good and multiply like nothin you've ever seen. In fact, try to killin em off is like feedin grits to ants.
Ba dump bump.. way to use to it.
"Yall'll"...I so wanna incorporate this in my vocab.
Yall'll, yall're, yall'd or just plain yalls...it's amazin what you can add to the word yall.
One day, yall'll talk riiight.
Wonder what would happen if you fried those suckers up in a pan. Very Bear Grylls-ish.
I bet they'd pop. Like popcorn.
This reminds me of the chocolate covered frogs Monty python bit.
Mmmmm...Whizzo chocolates?
Really made a mistake buyin a bunch a mesquite last fall (these guys were sellin it on the side a the road cheap, and you know how I like a deal). Burnin a fire and livin rm smells like a smoke house.
On second thought, I like that.
You could turn up the heat real high and pretend you're in a sweat lodge! Do it!
As an update to this post. I've probably killed 80% of the ants via boiling water and instant grits, but not all of them. In talking to our local nursery, he pretty much says it's almost impossible to kill them all. He gave (sold) me some stuff that should wipe out most of them in a day, but not all of them. There's other stuff that he says will kill most to all of them, but it takes longer. We're running out of time though and killing 95% of what's left should essentially take out the colony...I hope.
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