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Okay so I've just finished mowing both the back and front lawns to my house and the grass is just covered in massive ant hills! in the back garden the ant hills are so big it's looks like we've re-landscaped the grass. So I had a strop on as (a) garden looks rancid with all lumps and clumps of mud from ants hills and (b)I hate creepy crawlies! normally mowing would me Mr MC's domain but as he has a knackered knee he can't do it (although I do have him strimming the hedge!).
So Mr MC thinks we can't do anything about ant hills .. but there must be something we can do to get rid of them without killing the entire lawn? There are so many now they are beginning to take over the whole lawn.
Anyone know if we can do anything and if so what???
Not a lot you can do with ants. Brush the soil away, then mow the lawn. There is little available to treat ants in lawns. You are at the worst time of year because they are getting ready to leave the nest and go and form new colonies. You may see flying ants soon, if they've not gone already.
The standard treatment for killing ants is boiling water, but in a lawn this is troublesome. You have to dig up the lawn and get down to the nest and hope that the queen is around. Then pour a kettle of boiling water over her/them. This will kill them, but it is a pain of a job, and stands a chance of killing the lawn as well.
There used to be a treatment available to commercial lawn growers, but like all the good things in life it has now been banned by EU. There is not a lot you can do, sorry.
gggrrr so Mr MC was right then! Best get grovelling!!
Think I heard it said that there are more ants in the average garden than there are people living in UK!
Bloke on the radio the other day he reckons the boiling water trick works.
Boiling water does work if they are on patio etc, but wondering if I start pouring boiling water onto the ants nest in the lawn, won't that severley decimate my lawn and hence I'm not much better off??
Nuke them from space; it's the only way to be sure.
I use antkiller powder stuff - as it doesn't kill them straight away, the ants take it down into the nest and it seems to kill them off. You're still left with a lumpy lawn though, plus it looks like a coke dealer has had a seizure.
sprinkle cornflour around the nest. they bring it back and have a big cornflour eating party and their poor wee tummies swell up and explode.
all you need is a 6 year old kid who has a warped fascination with killing ants with magnifying glass.
My parents said it used to keep me busy all summer 😉
I did boiling water on an ants nest in my lawn, it killed the ants and left an 8" patch of dead grass. This grew back within a couple of months but the ants didn't.....
we move nests at work so i dont see why you couldnt here. 1st dig up the turf over the nest and put it aside. Then dig out the nest and put it in a bucket and stick it somwhwere else where you have already dug a hole, needs to be similar to where it came from(obviously away from the lawn). Fill in the hole in the lawn with some soil and put the turf back. Simples. Probably want to wear gloves but other than that should be fine. No need to nuke the poor ants, they dont harm owt
erugh eurgh eurgh Vader sorry can't do that! think i'll just live with a newly landscaped wobbley lawn!! I just can't bare looking at them all sprawling over everything gives me heebie jeebies .. wish it didn't though!