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Today's due diligence
On 9/5/2017 10:43 AM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote: Those of you out there that don't have fire ants consider yourselves blessed. We're in the progress of pouring boiling water down our biggest pest in the gardens home. I've dealt with fire ants for 40+ years; good luck with that hot water down the hole bs. Just as with ground-nesting wasps, gasoline and fire work well but, unlike the wasps, surviving ants will re-establish nets elsewhere. In 20 years of "due diligence" at this place, I've got them down to a few small outbreaks each year. Of course, since this land was "cleared" 60-70 years ago, it may be that nesting sites (decaying subterranean wood, e.g. tree roots) have diminished but I credit Amdro, IME, the only ant specific insecticide that works on them. Amdro is "fire and specific" only because many other types of ants won't eat the bait but those that do die. Like the boiling water, any other product that I've tried simply disperses them, resulting in a host of satellite mounds, often at significant distance from the original problem site. They're a major pain but at least they're more easily controlled than grasshoppers and locusts. Having said that, I must confess that a fragment of the familiar colony persists (and has done for years) in and under the timber retaining walls of one garden bed and I have the scars to prove it. I don't use any "chemicals" in the garden and I know of no predators or pathology that'll take the little *******s out so I just deal with ****ed off ants injecting fire into my feet and lower legs several times each year. I can't guess whether or for how long the toxin remains in an AWG's body but I'm sure to be loaded. It is possible to use the ants' behavior pattern and tribal reaction to threats to minimize the damage to ones self but I'm not telling. I was raised in Orange County, Texas, where so it is said, that foreign fire ants first came ashore. They finally found us after several years at the old home place, right after I got out of the USN and married, about 1961 if memory, very old memory, works. Here we have five feet of gumbo clay under two inches of sand for our front and back yards. The fire ants come up sporadically in the spring, usually by our raised bed gardens. Right where, if you're working the garden, you get bitten. Don't want the amdro or other things there as the plants pick it up too. The boiling water, two pots full, are to kill the queens, generally the rest of the ants, less queens, generally just die off as I have seen before. Now we're waiting for two things, if the ants all die we got the queens; if they start moving out, they've still got at least one queen and they're all moving next door. Suits me. |
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