In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 17 of 1154
The ants in my yard, tho fairly numerous, have stayed outside.
I think they used to come in years ago ... not remembering.
Now the house is full of Pholcidae ... those small, slender, long-legged spiders.
I know: sounds really disgusting unless you find buggy creatures interesting.
The Pholcidae efficiently control flies, mosquitoes, anything that flies in here ...
and they usually control other spiders. One time, I did find a black widow in the
cupboard, had to remove her myself.
One friend referred to them as my pets; & I sometimes treat them that way.
Needless to say, when I have guests, they prefer to visit on the patio.
... oooOO}{OOooo ...
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
The ants in my yard, tho fairly numerous, have stayed outside.
I think they used to come in years ago ... not remembering.
Now the house is full of Pholcidae ... those small, slender, long-legged spiders.
I know: sounds really disgusting unless you find buggy creatures interesting.
The Pholcidae efficiently control flies, mosquitoes, anything that flies in here ...
and they usually control other spiders. One time, I did find a black widow in the
cupboard, had to remove her myself.
One friend referred to them as my pets; & I sometimes treat them that way.
Needless to say, when I have guests, they prefer to visit on the patio.
... oooOO}{OOooo ...
LOL...
I get cha. My "basement" part of my tri-level home is the part that I haven't rehabbed yet. I'd really rather have a generac to make sure it shouldn't flood again before I put all that time and money into it. I've got a nice dirty crawl space down there too.
Until the ants came in, the only bugs I ever had in my house were spiders. Smaller unthreatening ones that are probably similar to the Pholcidae you've got, and larger somewhat terrifying looking ones called Wolf Spiders. (They're pretty fascinating, and pretty much harmless to humans).
I've always left them alone since they stayed in the basement where nobody ever goes and they seemed to be paying the rent until I fixed the place up and got the Orkin man to come around.
They've killed a TON of ants around the floor of the perimeter of the house though since late spring, and because of that they started multiplying andmigrating upward. So I've been killing ants and spiders now. It's a rather large problem I'm dealing with. I don't think a spray bottle of Raid is going to cut it for me unfortunately.
Anybody ever try those ant traps where the ants don't die right away and they carry the poison back to their colonies?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The ants we have around here are Argentinian imports, which are known for creating 'supercolonies'. iirc, a supercolony has taken over the Iberian peninsula.
Generally they get worse and worse as the year progresses starting out in spring, until winter rain (if we get any) drowns them out. But some of my coworkers have issues with rising soil water forcing ants into the home when it first starts to rain.
Ants are either 'protein eaters' or 'sugar eaters', in terms of what attracts them to bait, or so I've read. Argentinian ants are 'protein eaters', but it's hard to make bait out of protein. It's much easier to get rid of 'sugar eaters' because everything dissolves in water, and you can't separate the bait from the poison.
The poison in this case is ordinary boric acid dissolved in water, which, as the idea goes, the foragers take back to the colony with the bait, and eventually it kills the queen.
In any case, there are recipes online to make boric acid poison, and mix it with sugar water bait. Argentinian ants just laughed at it - and they ignored the bits of tuna that I mashed up with boric acid solution.
Long story to get to what didn't work, but if you have a different kind of ant, OR you find a way to do things better, you may have better luck.
HAS IT NOT OCCURRED TO YOU BY NOW THAT IF YOU HAVE TO RESORT TO LOGICAL FALLACIES AND TROLLING YOUR SO-CALLED ARGUMENTS ARE LIES?
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Maybe if you mix it with butter or peanut butter
Quote:
Homemade Ant Killer With Boric Acid
... Types of Ants
Boric acid ant killers aren't effective against all species of ant. They work best against ants that are a nuisance in your home, such as the Argentine ant, the Pharoah ant and the odorous house ant. These ants are small and usually black or reddish-black, often called sugar ants. Other ants that normally stay outdoors, such as harvester ants or fire ants, aren't as receptive to boric acid ant baits.
What to Mix
Some ants have a sweet tooth while others are more likely to seek out fats and grease. Mix your boric acid with a couple of different foods to find out which one draws the most ants before you settle on your recipe. You can dissolve sugar in water, use jelly or honey, or use peanut butter or regular butter. Mixing 1 teaspoon of boric acid with 1 cup of the food makes a 2 percent solution. If you're using sugar water, add about 8 teaspoons to 1 cup of water, then add 1 teaspoon of boric acid. If the ants aren't attracted to your baits as well as you'd like, reduce the boric acid to 1/2 teaspoon per 1 cup for a 1 percent solution. Clearly label any leftover bait you store ...
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/homemade-ant-killer-boric-acid-74569.html
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
It's hard to tell what my ants are, not being an expert in the field. They certainly do seem to like sugar though. I left a bowl of cereal out that I had eaten before bed the other night and when I woke up there were a hundred of them in the bowl!
I could leave a bowl that had chili in it out all night though and they won't touch it.
But, I've left out a TV dinner container and they were all about that. It was turkey/gravy with peas and mashed potatoes. (And god knows what else they put in those).
They're all really tiny black ants. I've never seen a large one in my house. Never seen any winged ones either. Just tiny black ones.... hundreds, probably thousands of them.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Selfishly happy to say that my favorite CA native nursery, Theodore Payne, http://theodorepayne.org/ was spared the ravages of wildfire. Even tho the flames came within about a half-mile, there was a ridge between the fire and the nursery and the winds were blowing in the right (or wrong, depending on where you were!) direction.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I still wish you could send it here. I'd be more than happy to send you some of our relentless, unbroken sunshine and dry air in exchange.
sigh
HAS IT NOT OCCURRED TO YOU BY NOW THAT IF YOU HAVE TO RESORT TO LOGICAL FALLACIES AND TROLLING YOUR SO-CALLED ARGUMENTS ARE LIES?
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I can't tell if you're being a dick or if you truly are a gloomy day enthusiast, Kiki.
Sounds like paradise to me.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I like an environment with at least some green growing things. Gloomy, rainy days are the payment you make for green growing things. It's a trade-off. Aside from which, prolonged drought is killing the trees. Can you say WILDLAND FIRE? And, as I've learned from the news, "too urban to burn" is now a myth.
The graph below was last year. But since we've had no rain since June, they didn't update it. Generally, by this time of year we'd have around 4" already (blue trace). But we've had none, and there's none in sight.
HAS IT NOT OCCURRED TO YOU BY NOW THAT IF YOU HAVE TO RESORT TO LOGICAL FALLACIES AND TROLLING YOUR SO-CALLED ARGUMENTS ARE LIES?
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I like an environment with at least some green growing things. Gloomy, rainy days are the payment you make for green growing things. It's a trade-off. Aside from which, prolonged drought is killing the trees. Can you say WILDLAND FIRE? And, as I've learned from the news, "too urban to burn" is now a myth.
Yeah... I thought about that after I posted. It's just typically not something anybody around me ever says... and now that my mom and stepdad moved down to Arizona it's something they playfully brag about now that they're living it. They had just come back up for a week and the tail end of their stay it snowed a bit and they couldn't wait to get back down to the warm dry air.
My mom kind of needs it with her MS. If it was just a matter of trying to get away from Illinois taxes they would have moved to Indiana and stayed close to family. She doesn't do well at all in the humidity up here though.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME