(FOX 2) - This week, Jill Washburn, our Jill of All Trades, shows us how to kill ants (and some other bugs) without using harsh chemicals.
One common way is to use Borax. It's inexpensive and available in the laundry aisle of your grocery store, discount store, hardware store, or big box home improvement store.
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Jill of All Trades shows us how to kill ants without harsh chemicals
Jill of All Trades gives us some techniques for killing ants without using harsh chemicals.
You can mix it with sugar (3 parts sugar to 1 part borax), honey (use just enough honey with borax to make a paste), or peanut butter (2 parts borax to 1 part peanut butter).
Jill says that everyone knows that ants love sugar, but many people do not know that ants also love protein, which is why the peanut butter works.
Once you mix the paste of your choice, you can put it in a shallow container that the ants can easily reach and place it where needed.
The advantage of using borax is that ants will take the bait back to the ant mounds and it will kill more than the ants that you can see. The disadvantage, says Jill, is that borax is not pet-friendly.
One of the ways around this is to mix the paste that you want and push it into a straw. You can then put the straw in a tight space where pets cannot reach, like under a refrigerator, or between cabinets, etc.
Another natural option is diatomaceous earth. It's also inexpensive and available in the garden sections of hardware and home improvement stores.
It is a super-fine powder that is made from a crushed silica rock. It is harmless to humans and pets, but under a microscope it looks like super tiny glass shards. When the bugs walk through it, it slices through their exoskeletons and then the bugs will die of dehydration within hours.
An easy way to apply it, is to put it in a squeeze bottle, like the kind you can get at a beauty supply. You'll be able to squeeze out a line of the powder and establish a perimeter in the desired location. It can be used inside and out, although it loses its effectiveness if it gets wet.
On the plus side, diatomaceous earth kills more than just ants. It will also kill beetles, bedbugs, cockroaches, fleas, silverfish, spiders, crickets, grasshoppers, and much, much more. It's easy to find more info online.
PROJECT RATING: Super Easy
To watch Jill take you through the process, just click on the video player above.