Ants have invaded your garden and you are afraid that they will settle in your home? We have covered all the natural repellant tips to prevent them from entering your home, without you having to take out the insecticide bomb.
It is never pleasant to find yourself with an Indian line of ants in your kitchen or living room or worse still with a real anthill at the bottom of the garden. Even if ants are harmless insects, finding them inside is not what you want. The use of insecticide products could seem the most effective solution to hunt them, however it is to be avoided at all costs! If anti ant repellents, gel or spray are harmful to insects, they are also harmful to your health, that of your children and animals and to the well-being of the environment.
It is important to know that insects play a key role in balancing biodiversity and it is essential to preserve them. However, to prevent them from becoming harmful or too invasive, discover our tips for keeping ants away from the garden and the house.
Maintain good hygiene in the house
It is in the spring that the risk of finding ants at home is greatest because it is the time when the worker ants come to look for food for the queen.
Regular cleaning of your interior will therefore avoid attracting them. Store your leftover food in airtight containers. Close your trash can and throw it in an outdoor bin as soon as it is full. Always clean your surfaces, especially if there are traces of sugar. Do not leave dirty dishes lying around in the sink especially if there is water. Vacuum all the nooks and crannies in the house to leave no crumbs or leftover food lying around.
Ant-ants: the recipe that works every time!
To strengthen your daily cleaning, you can clean your surfaces with a cleaning product based on white vinegar or apple cider vinegar. Ants hate strong smells. To reinforce this repellent effect, you can add an essential oil with an addictive and acidic smell to the mixture.
To make your natural anti-ant maintenance product, pour into a 2/3 volume spray bottle of warm water and complete with white vinegar or apple cider vinegar, plus a dozen drops of essential oil. The most effective essential oils against ants are: lemon, eucalyptus, lavender, peppermint and tea tree.
Use this mixture as a non-toxic cleaning product and spray it on high-traffic areas or places of the house: windows, entrances, balconies or terraces. This mixture will also have an effect on other pests such as aphids. Then spray carefully on your plants.
Other natural and economical repellents
Ants are not fans of strong smells at all. You probably already have many odorous and natural repellents in your closets that will scare away invasive ants.
Among these, coffee grounds. It has natural insect repellant properties which will make it an excellent ant barrier. To do this, collect the coffee grounds and place them in a dish around the doors and windows or in the small holes in the house through which the ants arrive. Cinnamon powder, fragrant spice, will have the same repellent effect.
Plants such as lavender, basil or peppermint, which have a strong odor, also act as a repellent. And good point, they leave you with a pleasant smell of fresh and nature. You can for this place branches, leaves or bouquets in strategic places of the house.
Two other elements present in your kitchen will be excellent repellents: lemon and garlic. The acidity of the lemon and its smell will scare away the ants, even more if the lemon is slightly moldy. The same goes for garlic. Mash a clove of garlic or cut pieces of lemon and place them on the ant path or in the entrances of the house. They will no longer risk coming to your house unexpectedly.
On the same barrier principle, the chalk powder is radically effective. Ants hate this fine powder that clings to their legs. They will never cross a chalk barrier. Sprinkle it in the corners of windows and doors and repeat the operation regularly. You can do the same with baking soda.
An equally natural and free tip is the crushed eggshells. They will serve as a barrier if they are strategically placed. They will have the advantage of preventing the passage of any crawling insect.
An ant bait in your garden
A preventive solution is to keep ants outside the house by offering them a bait they love: sugar ! This may be in the form of honey or jam placed in a non-annoying and distant corner and on their way to the house. Placed in a small container, the pest will find itself trapped.
If the repellents are not enough
If despite all your efforts, ants are still present in your house or too invasive, there are more radical solutions but which are to use as a last resort because they kill the ants.
To permanently get rid of ants and if you have found their anthill, you just need to put a mixture of boiling water and black soap. Drowned and irritated by the soap, this should definitively end their invasion.
You can also get rid of ants by poisoning them with a mixture of liquid sugar and salt. The sugar will serve as bait and the salt will eventually poison them. The ants will bring this mixture back to the nest to feed the larvae which will also eventually die.
Finally, the land of Diatomeus, microscopic algae, is an ecological insecticide widely used in organic farming. It will be effective at the entrance of the house, windows, terraces or small holes. Be careful however, even if it is natural, it poses a risk if you have children or pets.
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