Daily Movement

As an update of How to get rid of ants, let me share a technique that seems to be working.

I’ve been trying the Ortho Home Defense Max spray, active ingredient of Bifenthrin. You spray the holes or crevices where you see ants coming out of or going into. A little while later, no ants use those holes any more. Eventually, the ants find a new way to get in and you repeat the process of spraying the deterrent into the crevice.

It is supposed to last for 12 months, and it has actually kept the garage area free of ants for a few days now. The ants did manage to find a new entrance in the last day, but after spraying that too, the trail stopped. Maybe the spray doesn’t actually kill, but as long as it keeps them out of the house, that’s good enough for me.

7 days later and Roundup is working. In some cases, it killed more than just what was sprayed, in other cases, the greenery survived. In maybe half of the cases, the greenery was killed as expected.

You can read more here.

Apparently “herbicide” is not a very popular folksonomy tag, but it should be. I’m starting an experiment in use of Roundup. You can read more here. or see what flickr knows about herbicide.

This is a nice example use of roundup from www.plancolombia.org:

Poison from the air: spraying glyphosate herbicide in Colombia

I also learned that Oregon will soon require documentation of use of pesticide/herbicide by businesses in any location, or uses in any place that is open to the public.

Oregon department of agriculture from sillydog flickr post.

It seems documentation of use by home consumers should be required too, but I guess that breadth of law wouldn’t pass the vote.

Keeping the lawn green in an arid west/southwest climate can be expensive unless you’re smart with water use.

Here’s a tool to track watering requirements based on evapotranspiration.

Enjoy.

I’ve been having ant problems. It must be that time of the year. It definitely is not because of food lying around in the open — they literally crawl out of the woodwork in the bathroom as well as the kitchen. The Raid Ant Baits, contrary to popular ePinion, did not work well for me. The ants did not feed off the chemical traps even though they were placed near the trails.

The Combat Quick Kill formula attracts ants more effectively. Ants were going into the feed containers within a few minutes of placing them. The Combat brand uses a different chemical than the Raid bait, so that might be the reason why. Although the package recommends using all the traps, I use just one at a time and wrap up the rest tightly in plastic.

Equal also seemed to work — there were little nibbles bitten out of the pile of equal — but I’m not quite sure if the ants died or if they just went elsewhere. They weren’t eating it up though. They seemed to dislike it at first.

Folks have pretty good experience using Equal as ant poison though, and best of all, it’s free if you eat at International House of Pancakes.

Updated 2004-12-14: Best ant killing formula is also a somewhat toxic one, but one to consider as a last resort. I have found the Raid spray containing permethrin to be effective. The best way is to find where the ants are entering and exiting the area and spray at that entrance point to create a toxic barrier. Then either spray and kill the remaining ants or wipe them up with a towel. Spray low, don’t breathe. If you spray inside the house, keep the window open for a while. If you can smell it, the active ingredients must besomewhere in the air too…

Update 10/19/2007: How to get rid of ants - part 2