Organic Gardening

Manage Fire Ants Organically

One of the most annoying pests in my garden is fire ants. They seem to infest any area that is moist, which means that all of my plantings are susceptible to becoming infested with these industrious creatures. I frequently encounter them as I am weeding or planting, and I have seen them infest root areas of plants so completely that they actually kill the plant. Add to this the painful bites that they inflict on humans and animals, and they quickly become number one on my hit list.

I garden exclusively organically, so I am limited in the choices of products that I use to control pests on my property. For ant control I have tried all of the recommended products, Amdro (not organic), spinosad, orange oil drenches, and Logic (not organic), with moderate success. My experience with these products is that they may kill the mound that I am treating, but another mound will usually appear within a short amount of time somewhere close by.

Recently, I read an article about treating fire ants on the Dirtworks site. I was kind of surprised to find such an in-depth description of treating fire ants on this site since they are located in Vermont, but they seemed to know what they were talking about, so I decided to give their approach a try. They are selling a product called Perma-Guard Fire Ant D-20 which is a combination of diatomaceous earth (DE), pyrethrins, and piperonyl butoxide, but the product that I had on hand was Diatect V which is DE and pyrethrins.

I have had very good results from using Diatect V on the ants and mounds that I have treated thus far, and I haven’t even tried injecting the substance into the mound. I just dust liberally every time I run across ants in the yard or in my planting beds, and the ants literally die or disappear almost immediately, never to be seen again. This product has the added benefit of killing many other pests that I deal with regularly such as scorpions, roaches, and giant centipedes. I simply dust around the foundation of my house and these pests are not a problem. The only ones I find are dead ones. I used to have a huge problem with ants getting into my cat’s food, but dusting the area around the cat feeding bowl has taken care of that problem as well. The only downside is that the product needs to be reapplied after a hard rain, but with so little rain occurring here, that isn’t a very big problem.

Finally, I have to admit that I get a huge amount of satisfaction from being able to strike back swiftly and fatally after being stung by fire ants while enjoying my garden. I know it is bad for my karma, but I’ll just have to live with that for the time being.

Update to this post May 2009: Upon further investigation it seems that piperonyl butoxide, an ingredient in Perma-Guard Fire Ant D-20, is not OMRI certified, since it is a synthetic compound, so this product is not a recommended product for use in an organic garden. Diatect V does not include this ingredient, so it is still a recommended product, however, it seems that this product has been discontinued, although it is still available through some online sources.

© 2008 Lost Valley Gardens.