On how to get ants out of the garden and whether it really needs to be done

Someone will say: "Wait. Are you telling me how to get ants out of the garden? Maybe, on the contrary, how to get an ants in the garden? We have been taught since childhood that these laborers are the orderlies of the forest, they destroy harmful insects. Here and in children's cartoons there is no one who reproaches the ants for wrecking. "

All right. Because everything is complicated. Ants are formidable enemies of garden and vegetable pests. And they also help to multiply one of them - aphids. More specifically, the ants bred it.

In nature, there are many pairs of living organisms living in symbiosis with each other. Actinia and hermit crab, shark and fish-stuck, bird of tar and crocodile. Basically, this is protection from enemies or cleaning hard-to-reach places on the body. The case in the pair "ants-aphids" is quite special. Of course, it's wrong to think that industrious insects, especially literally, graze aphids on the leaves of garden plants to harm you and get you off your feet in search of how to destroy the aphids and how to get the ants off the plot.

One of the signs of the defeat of the aphid plant is the leaves covered with a sticky secret. All because each aphid - a living pump, sucking from the cells of the leaf so many juices that it does not even have time to digest everything. Surplus is released from her body in the form of a droplet of sweet "dew". Ants were addicted to this "dew". And so much that it really looks like alcoholism in humans. When the whole plant is sucked dry, the ants carefully transfer the "milk cows" to another plant, thereby spreading the zone of destruction. This especially applies to aphids that feed on root juices: ants pave her way to where she herself would never have reached.

And this is the only serious accusation against the "forest orderlies", sufficient to reflect on how to get the ants out of the garden.

A very effective preventive tool is a regular digging of the site. The mixed layers of soil are unsuitable building material for creating an ant colony in it.

"Soft", humane means are designed to prevent ants from entering the beds or to force them to move to a new place of residence. Quite rightly noted: in the garden, where measures are constantly being taken to destroy aphids, the ants, as they say, "let them down." Another humane means of how to get ants out of the garden is a water barrier, built from a halve of a large plastic bottle dug into the ground or an old tire filled with water. Such a moat should surround your site around the perimeter.

"Biological weapons" to scare off ants - parsley, mustard, tansy, anise, tomato tops: an unbearable smell for them. The leaves and stems of these plants are laid on ant pathways, tied with tree trunks. The same function is performed on the seeds of mint and valerian.

There are many other similar means. But the most radical gardeners and gardeners treat them with contempt and argue: there is no other means than to destroy the ants, which means - to destroy the anthill. This is recommended in the evening, when all the ants return to their colony. As follows unearth an anthill to the deepest chambers, you should pour everything with boiling water or a mixture of boric acid solution with granulated sugar (1 glass - 4 tablespoons) or kerosene solution (10 liters per 10 liters). At the most extreme, chemical insecticides are used.

The joy of getting rid of ants is usually drowned out by the quiet voice of "humanitarians". "Have you found a way to get the ants out of the garden? They say. - Well. Be ready to invade much more terrible enemies of your site than ants "alcoholics" ... "