Which reminds me, I killed a fire ant hill with orange oil and water and am passing that on. One ounce of straight orange oil mixed into one gallon of water, drench the hill, and wait about 18 hours. I’ve only tried it on the first one I found, but if it works consistently, it’ll be the best solution I’ve seen yet. I normally kill them with boiling water, but that doesn’t always get ALL of them and also kills happy microorganisms nearby.
Passing that on for all the other ant-oppressed gardeners.
I’ve been using variations of the orange oil drench for fire ant mounds for 10-15 years now. I update as Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor, improves the formula. We live out in the country in central Texas where we will never escape fire ants so I spend time almost weekly in good weather drenching a mound or 5. Currently the Dirt Doctor’s best mix is equal parts orange oil, compost tea and molasses. Use that as the concentrate then add 4-6 oz to a gallon of water. After drenching the mounds add beneficial nematodes per label directions.
I have also found that by tearing citrus peels up in little pieces and scattering on the ground in our fenced dog area it seems there are less fire ants to antagonize our dogs. I don’t have any scientific data to back that up. But I can say that part of our property needs much less fire ant drenching. If I had a source to get large amounts of citrus peels I believe I’d cover the yard around the house at least once to test my theory.
Thanks for that tip.
And after you can dig it up...and you have "art"!!