Ants may be tiny, but they can be a big nuisance when they invade your yard. Often, ants will appear on the driveway and cracks around the house. While this signals that your home is attracting ants, there are proactive steps to keep ants out of the house. Fortunately, there are several effective strategies to help you manage ant infestations that not only protect your home, but your yard as well. To help keep ants away from your yard, the following outlines what attracts them and how to manage them.
What Attracts Ants To Yards
Like humans, ants are social creatures. Ant colonies consist of thousands of workers and a queen (also like bees) as they work together to survive. And just like humans, survival depends on food, water and shelter, which are the underlying reasons ants are attracted to our homes, gardens and lawns.
- Food Sources: Ants are on a constant mission for nourishment, which means they are always seeking food and sustenance for their colony. Help mitigate this risk by keeping your garbage can clear of food residue, picking up any crumbs after a cookout and generally avoiding too much food outside.
- Water Sources: Ants need water to survive and typically yards have some damp areas or standing water following storms or irrigation. If ant infestations are a problem, then check your yard for leaky hoses, bird baths, or overwatered lawns, which can attract ants.
- Shelter: Ants seek shelter, or undisturbed, cool spots to build nests for their colonies. As a result, yard will often see those ant hills near soil, mulch, or even the undersides of rocks and patio stones. While options are limited to prevent ants from seeking shelter in yards, generally a protective barrier, like a repelling smell, helps keep them away from gardens (and other sensitive areas).
Fortunately, ants leave plenty of warning signs that they are nearby. In particular, ants are attracted to plants, so keep an eye on potted plants or flowers around the outside of the house. If you see a recurring line of ants and are worried about your garden, plants or them entering your home, then look out for these common signs (which should help mitigate nesting concerns):
- Visible Ant Trails: Ants often create visible trails along plant stems and leaves as they move between their nests and food sources.
- Presence of Honeydew-Producing Insects: Look for aphids or scale insects on your plants, as these pests attract ants due to the sweet honeydew they produce.
- Plant Damage: Ants can cause indirect damage to plants by disturbing soil around roots or excavating nests in plant pots, potentially harming plant health.
5 Tips to Keep Ants Out of Your Yard
First and foremost, keeping ants out of your yard (and home) starts with identifying anything that offers food, water or shelter. Understandably, eliminating all sources of these essentials is unlikely, if not right impossible, but being mindful is the important step. For example, don’t stop grilling burgers or eating outside during a nice summer night because some crumbs may land on the patio or deck. Simply, be mindful during cleanup and be a little more vigilant if you have spotted ants in the yard. Likewise, ensuring food scraps are in a bag within the garbage clean goes a long way to prevent ant infestations.
Additionally, every so often, walk around the yard looking for excess moisture or water. Check the hoses, faucets and sprinklers for any leaks or drainage issues, which lead to standing water that attracts ants. While a heavy rain storm will happen and some puddles will appear, stopping sustained standing water is the goal. To help keep ants out of your yard, then the following tips go even further in mitigating these risks.
Utilize Natural Repellents to Keep Ants Away
Natural substances are effective at repelling ants and can be used safely around your yard.
- Diatomaceous Earth is a powder, made from fossilized diatoms, which is a natural insecticide that dehydrates ants. Sprinkle diatomaceous earth around the perimeter of your yard, along ant trails, and near potential entry points to keep ants away.
- Nematodes are microscopic organisms that target and parasitize ant larvae and pupae, helping to disrupt the ant life cycle. Consider applying them to the soil around plants to reduce the ant population in your garden.
- Citrus peels are a natural scent that ants dislike. Simply spread lemon, lime, or orange peels around your yard, and in particular, near ant mounds or entry points to your home.
- Essential oils like peppermint, tea tree, and eucalyptus are natural ant repellents. Mix a few drops of essential oil with water and spray it around your yard’s perimeter, on ant trails, and near any entry points to deter ants.
Create Physical Barriers to Keep Ants Away
Like natural repellents, physical barriers help deter ants from entering certain areas of your yard or home.
- Mulch is great for your garden, but also creates an ideal nesting site for ants. It is still important to mulch, but consider using cedar mulch, which naturally repels ants, or opt for inorganic mulch like gravel or stone.
- Drawing lines with chalk or sprinkling baby powder around areas where you’ve noticed ants can disrupt their scent trails and keep them from advancing further.
- Applying copper tape around garden beds, flower pots, or the base of your home can create a barrier that ants are reluctant to cross. Similarly, apply a sticky substance like petroleum jelly around the base of plant stems to block ants from climbing up.
Manage Vegetation to Reduce Food and Shelter Sources
Overgrown plants, bushes, trees, shrubs and other vegetation provide bridges for ants to access your home or other areas of your yard.
- Regularly trim back trees, shrubs, and bushes that are close to your home. This prevents ants that are already in the yard from using branches as pathways to get into your house. Likewise, removing debris from gardens helps prevent ants from sheltering and nesting, which reduces the risk of an infestation.
- Keep plants well-pruned to prevent ants from accessing overhanging branches or pathways to nests. Trim back vegetation that touches the ground or other plants. By reducing dense foliage, it is more difficult for ants to build nests and establish their colonies.
Attract Natural Predators to Mitigate Ant Infestations
While attracting more pests seems like inviting another problem, encouraging certain natural ant predators in your yard can help keep a potential infestation in check.
- Birds like sparrows, wrens, and swallows eat ants. While attracting them to your yard by setting up bird feeders, birdbaths, and nesting boxes is a double-edged sword because they introduce standing water. However, if these are built away from high-traffic areas, they may attract ants and birds to an undesirable part of the yard (leaving the rest ant-free for your family to enjoy).
- Ladybugs, spiders, and beetles prey on ants, so planting flowers like marigolds, sunflowers, and fennel can attract these beneficial insects to your yard, which will feed on ants.
Use Ant Baits
If a natural repellent, barriers and predators don’t work, consider ant baits and traps that may work. However, it is important to consider the location of an infestation. For example, if ants are populating near gardens or grills, then using a toxic substance may introduce an unnecessary risk. Additionally, it is important to place ant baits around your yard, particularly near ant trails or entry points, and monitor them regularly.
- Place ant baits away from your problem areas or garden plants to attract ants. The bait contains a food source mixed with a slow-acting insecticide, so the ants carry the bait back to their nest and gradually reduce the ant infestation.
- Create a homemade ant bait using borax, sugar, and water. Place the bait in shallow containers near ant trails. The ants are attracted to the sugar, and the borax acts as a slow-acting poison that eliminates the colony.
How to Get Ants Out of Your Yard with Pest Control
Keeping ants out of your yard requires a combination of preventive measures, natural repellents, and careful management of your outdoor space. Plus, consistency is key. Therefore, regularly monitoring your yard and staying on top of these methods will ensure that ants remain a minor concern rather than a major problem. However, if these DIY tactics do not get the ants out of your garden, then consider pest control.
Working with a professional ant pest control provider helps provide peace of mind knowing that your home and family remain safe. Typically, ant control treatment includes proactive steps, such as:
- Fully cleaning your kitchen to remove all residue, including sweeping behind appliances and throwing away any garbage
- Tossing out old food
- Make sure all food – including pet food – is stored in fully sealed containers
- Removing any debris and residue from the garbage bin
- Getting leaky faucets and appliances under control
When you call Eliminate ‘Em, you’re guaranteed the best ant extermination services at the best price. Our technicians are standing by to rid your home of summer bugs today! Additionally, Eliminate ‘Em offers your family fast, reliable, and safe pest removal. You can call us 24/7 and expect:
- Knowledgeable, licensed and certified technicians
- Sealed entry points, so that ants won’t come back in the future
- Only EPA-approved solutions and products to be used in your home
- Same-day service – and we’re always on time!
We’ll also help you build a long-term pest control strategy to prevent the ants from returning!
With these strategies, you can protect your yard and enjoy the fruits of your labor without the nuisance of ants.
