And I'm moving in 5 months. And, my pots are literally boiling with common garden ants. Gazillions of them... Which is fine while they're sitting in my yard. But NOT fine when it comes time to move, and I load them in the truck or my van, and all those disturbed ants come boiling out of my van and go hunting for more safe territory. This happened the last time I gave a pot of irises away, so I fully expect it to happen when I move all of the pots - all 20+ of them.

While I don't exactly want to drown everything in Raid, I do want the ants gone when I load up my pots in the moving truck or my own person mom-van. No ants in my car, then I'd have to Raid the car...! I have plenty of time to do whatever is suggested, but I can't think of anything to be done organically to persuade them to move on to better homes.

I eagerly await all suggestions, thanks!

We've had several infestations of common little black house ants this year. They started to build nests in the walls at one point!

I used a poison called Terro. Don't like using poison, but these guys were persistant and the home remedies weren't working. Terro is in liquid form...you put some on a little piece of teh box it comes in and place it near the places the ants frequent. They suck up the liquid and carry it back to the nest where it kills other ants.

I get it at the hardware store...it's in an orange package a little longer and thinner than a deck of cards.

WE resorted to ant traps in my kitchen. They disappeared after that. So they must work. At least with the traps you don't have to spray anything else.

Try this link http://www.beginner-gardening.com/natural-ant-control.html
I have no experience with this but it may help.
Tim

I have used cinnamon with good results in my house and it makes everything smell nice too!
My first response to your post was "why not hose them down"? Are there living plants in the pots?

Yes, living plants/bulbs in ALL the pots. Otherwise I'd just empty them out and blast them with the hose. And I wouldn't even much care if they stayed there all the time, but every time I water the pots or move them around, ants come boiling out of the dirt and up my hands onto my clothing and hair, and it's just nasty....

I live (rent) on fill land by a freeway, and the only thing this land really produces well is gophers, rocks and ants.... All my pots start to tip within a month because the gophers tunnel up under them and then the pots sag into the dirt.

Sounds like I should try the cinnamon and the borax both. And then, after I've given that a good solid try, I'll try the Terro, because the stakes I use around the house are already NOT doing the job...

The quickest, and least poisonous, way to eliminate those ants is to repot everything. Any poison you use will take some time to work and even then may not be very effective.

After the cinnamon and the borax (use as little as possible as the borax isn't entirely toxic-free) give the asparatame (Equalâ„¢) a try. Many say the use of aspartame as an ant killer is purely anecdotal. But that depends on whether it's worked for them or not! For me it has. At least on ants in the house. Left little mounds of it near ant trails (and where my cats can't get to it either). The ants don't necessarily eat the stuff as they would real sugar, but they'll pick it up on their legs as they walk through it and carry it back to their nests & the queen. It must have worked and either killed off the colonies near my entrances or they just moved to someone else's house. One of the substances in the aspartame converts to formic acid or formaldehyde. Ants product formic acid to sting and kill their enemies. (Ever get stung by an ant then you know what I mean.) A little of the substance may not be that harmful to humans (note *a little* but I even debate a minute amount of the stuff as not being harmful). But what's little to you and me may be over"kill" to ants. Perhaps it's an overload of what they normally produce (the formic acid) that does them in. Just a guess. But it sounds plausible to me.

Try liberally sprinkling some of the stuff (generic aspartame is fine) and working it into the soil a bit. Might not see any affect immediately. Give it a couple or few days.

I've also had the same problem with some outside pots. Not all. The ants seem to be choosy. In those cases, I admit I did not try the aspartame and resorted to having to repot them, as Kimm suggested. Knocking as much soil off the roots as possible and hosing the roots down till I saw no movement, then repotting them all. Labor intensive, perhaps, but it worked. Also, Combatâ„¢ sells borax-enclosed ant traps that are least poisonous. Just stick one of them in each pot and wait a day or so for effectiveness. Good luck w/the move, btw.

Hi,
The coffee farmers in Kona, Hawaii use
boric acid, powdered sugar mixed with distilled
water. The ants bring this mixture to their
queen ant and this formula gets rid of the nest.
Use cotton ball to bait around your posessions.
Of course you might not want to get rid of all
your ants; because the ants recycle your
garbage. I tried this formula and seem to have
relatively good control.
I also use DE (diamateous earth).
I spread this powder around my house when I go
on vacation; and have pretty good control.
You could also spread some in your prized
plants (DE, diamateous earth).
Good Luck,
bill in socal

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. It's not practical for me to repot everything; it would be the least toxic way to deal with the ants - BUT I'm not kidding when I say I have 20+ pots, and all but 2 or 3 of them are 5 or 7 gallon black plastic nursery pots. That would be bags and bags of dirt, and I don't have that kind of money.

Only one plant has ants 'up top' above the dirt, and that's a pot of ranunculus (I know it has them down in the dirt too, but it has aphids up in the leaf buds, so the hose blast is being readied for the weekend). Every thing else has ants down in the dirt, nesting, which is why I need to do something to kill or chase away all those ants before I move.

I've always relied on Grant's Ant Stakes. It was the only thing that worked on the Argentine ants they have in So Cal. You don't need to repot, just stick a few ant stakes in pots and they'll disappear. The ants, not the pots. They're cheap, easy to use, disposable, and best of all, no fail. Good Luck.

I cannot find much information on Grants Ant Stakes except an admonition to put them where children and pets cannot access them. What is the active ingrediant in these? Are they an acceptable organic product? If these are something with some boric acid in them there are other, less expensive ways to get that out, if it is even necessary to kill ants.

The ants won't just stay in your pots. As the colonies grow, they will move, literally, to infest not only all your pots, but your entire house. Here in the south I have to battle ants constantly from March until October or November-and now I have spotted colonies of fire ants, sometimes called the ant from hell, a few miles from my house.

What are you growing in your pots? If it's not food, don't worry so much about organic- you have a bigger problem with insect infestation. Buy a water soluble insecticide that's safe for use on garden plants, mix it with water in your watering can or bucket, then thoroughly soak the soil in the pots.

No, it's not food, it's flowers. Mostly bulbs. But, yeah, they're EVERYWHERE... And in a recent rainstorm, some did move in the house (normal for here) and into a pot of creeping charley and into my bathroom. Bleah! I went and bought a pack of Terro, and it looks like I killed the ones in the creeping charley (I whacked the pot and no ants came boiling out this time), and no new ants are coming to the bait in the bathroom, so I'll be baiting ALL my pots outside.

It's bizarre! I've never had an ant problem like this before, not here at this house, and not anywhere else either. But I'm darned if I'm transporting the things to the new house this summer.... So, it's Ant War time.