How to Get Rid of Ants Naturally: 10 Ant Control Methods

When you step into your yard to relax in the evening, the last thing you want to see is a line of ants plodding along what appears to be a spontaneous ant highway.

Unfortunately, our yards, gardens, and even our homes attract ants. Any period of time they’re around is generally too long!

While most don’t typically carry illnesses, they are a nuisance. They tend to live in large colonies and leave scent trails indicating where their friends can follow to acquire food or water. In this guide, we’ll look at a number of ways to avoid, control, or kill ants naturally, even if they’ve already moved in.

Common Species

Some species reside in colonies based on just one queen, while others are based on multiple queens. There are over 12,000 known types worldwide. Here are a few common varieties and some information about them.

Argentine Ant

Argentine ants are common in the southeastern USA and California. They seldom get larger than an eighth of an inch or even smaller. Workers are shiny and light to medium brown in color. The only winged Argentines are the queens (and they’re rarely seen).

Argentine ants and fire ants are rarely in the same area as they fight for food sources. If you have one variety, you probably don’t have the other. They form megacolonies, and can have multiple queens in one immense nest. They quickly invade an entire yard or even neighborhood when groups splinter off to form other nests.

These ants nest in moist soil under logs, mulch, debris, or concrete slabs. They are often seen on sidewalks or plants. In the winter, they often try to move indoors.

Black House Ant

Sometimes called “little black ants”, black house ants are common in the eastern United States. They build outdoor colonies under logs, rocks, debris, and landscape mulch.

They are also one of the most common species found indoors. Here, they will nest in walls, under carpets, in woodwork or decaying wood, and in masonry. They often travel along baseboards or carpet edges. They prefer sweets, fats, and oils as food sources.

Rover Ant

These are sometimes called “seaside rover ants”, no bigger than a twelfth to a sixteenth of an inch in size. They are common in the Gulf states and in parts of Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and southern California.

Rovers fly to mate, and in some environments, they mate year-round. The workers are not winged.

Outdoors, they nest under mulch, heavy vegetation, rotting wood, or in potted plants. They enter homes via cracks in walls, openings around pipes, and windows. Indoors, they tend to favor moist environments and are often found in bathrooms and kitchens.

This is a relatively new pest species for most of the western US but has been established in the Gulf region for many decades. It is technically an invasive species.

Fire Ant

There are many species of fire ants, and some have a painful stinging bite. They nest outdoors in large mounds and can be quite aggressive.

Colonies grow to hundreds of thousands in size. This type is common throughout the southern United States. They eat almost any kind of plant or animal matter, but prefer high-protein food.

Black Garden Ant

Black garden ants are found throughout the United States. Once fertilized, queens remove their wings and digest their wing muscles as food during the winter.

Most colonies are 4,000-7,000, but can reach sizes of up to 40,000. Black garden ants nest underground, commonly under stones or in rotten wood. They like nectar, fruits, small insects, and farm aphids for honeydew as an additional food source.

Carpenter Ant

Carpenter ants come in many colors and sizes, found throughout the United States. They hollow out dead, moist wood in trees, fence posts, and firewood to build nests. However, they don’t eat wood. Inside, they build colonies in wall voids, foam insulation, eaves, and crawlspaces.

Carpenter ants forage at night during the summer, feeding on insects and insect secretions. In the spring and fall, they often invade homes to find other food sources.

Leaf Cutter Ant

Leaf cutters are also known as “cut ants”. There are many varieties within two different species. They are common in eastern and south central Texas and parts of western Louisiana.

These are considered an agricultural pest and have become a major problem in Central and South America. Leaf cutters fly en masse to mate. A queen mates with multiple males.

These ants carry more than 20 times their body weight and are easily identifiable in the wild as the workers carry large chunks of foliage. Leaf cutters get their name by removing foliage from plants to take home to the nest. There, they chew the foliage into a pulp and use it to farm a specific fungus to help feed the colony.

Ant Invasion Signs

For most people, the first sign of ant invasion in the garden is that marching ribbon of hundreds of them. But are there other signs to be wary of?

Singular Ants

Some varieties send out scouts to search for food or water sources. If you see any lone ants wandering on plant leaves or inside your house, they aren’t just out for a stroll. They’re actively searching for food or water.

Ant Highways

Ants create pheromone trails which can lead to meal or water sources. It’s like building a paved highway. Where one goes, others can assuredly follow. Even if you only see a few of them, but they seem to be following the same route, that could be a highway.

Ant Nest Entrances

A nest site looks like a small hole with dirt mounded around the edges or an actual raised anthill, depending on how long it has been there. You often find evidence of ants in pavement cracks or between paving bricks.

If there is a regular source of food, they will try to live nearby, so compost piles or trashcans are not immune. In the heat of midsummer, their nests might be harder to spot.

Aphids

If you see a lot of aphids on a specific plant, and then notice an ant or two nearby, that’s a warning sign. Some species will actually farm aphids for their honeydew, a secretion that the aphids produce. The ants will pick up aphids that they find, carry them to your plant, and set up a large colony.

Wandering Pieces of Leaves

While this sounds strange, the ridiculously strong leaf cutter ant can carry up to 20 times its own weight. If you happen to see a line of moving chunks of leaves, you probably have a colony of leaf cutters nearby.

10 Ways To Eliminate Ants Naturally

If you have ant issues, there is a wide selection of options to choose from. These are some of the options to combat ants in your home and garden naturally. If all of these fail, you can always contact your local pest control agency for professional assistance, too.

Homemade Sweet Ant Bait

You can make homemade bait using borax. A mixture of a half teaspoon of borax, a half teaspoon of a sugar substitute, and a half teaspoon of honey will make a sticky, but still somewhat granular paste bait. Spoon that into old open jars or bottle caps and place it around the nest or in the middle of a trail.

You may want to skip this if you have pets and children. They may try to eat this and ingest borax, which isn’t suited to their digestion.

Peanut Butter Poison

Mix a heaping tablespoon of creamy peanut butter with a level tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of borax, blending all of the ingredients thoroughly. Then, take small inch-long pieces of plastic straws and fill them with the peanut butter. Place them as you would other ant baits.

This will poison the ants who prefer oils, fats, and proteins. As with the previous method, keep curious children and pets away from this bait.

Spread Beneficial Nematodes

The variety of beneficial nematode that is most effective against ants is Steinernema carpocapsae. It attacks a wide variety of mobile insects including ants, fleas, caterpillars, and more.

If you spread beneficial nematodes directly into the nest and around your garden, you may notice a reduction in ant populations over time. However, since nematodes only have a lifespan of a couple of weeks, you may have to apply them once a week for 2-3 weeks to guarantee there are enough in various stages of their lifecycle to maintain them in the soil.

In addition, this variety of beneficial nematode is not very mobile. Put them directly where you want them by using a hose-end sprayer to apply them. Nematodes do not work on fire ants effectively.

Neem Oil

If you do find aphid farms on your plants, apply neem oil via a spray bottle to eliminate the aphids the ants are farming. If you kill their food source, ants will be less likely to frequent that area, but it won’t eliminate the ants entirely.

This is best used in conjunction with other ant elimination methods.

Citrus Oils

Orange and lemon oils are toxic to ants, which is why you don’t often see them near citrus trees.

Make a spray for your plants from ¾ cup of orange essential oil, 1 tablespoon of dish soap, 1 tablespoon of molasses, and a gallon of water. Place these in a spray bottle, and spray this on and around your plants. Dampen the soil’s surface as well. If you know the general path of the ants you can spray this too.

Citrus Peels

Don’t have essential oil in the house? Use orange peels instead. Place five or six good-sized orange peels into some water in a pot on the stove, and boil them until they’re soft (about 15 minutes).

Once they’re soft, add the liquid and peels into a food processor and make an orange slurry to pour around your plants.

Dry-drowning

Ants don’t like many mineral powders. The sharper edges cut them up and dehydrate them. This means you can use baby powder or food-grade diatomaceous earth in a powder sprayer on the nest or hill.

Start by following dusting any visible trails with the powder. Once you reach the hill or nest, dust more evenly over the exterior. Then put the nozzle of the powder sprayer into the entrance and coat as much of the interior as you can.

If you have a particularly deep nest, this may not be effective. They may just create another exit. But for shallow nests, it works well.

Peppermint Essential Oil

Ants do not like peppermint and definitely don’t like peppermint oil. Create an invisible, minty-fresh barrier by placing peppermint essential oil inside your house near potential entry points.

Swipe some on with a cotton ball, or mix with water and spray it around inside. You can even soak a cotton ball in the peppermint oil and leave it near a regularly-frequented area to discourage scouts.

Cinnamon oil works in a similar fashion. Essential oils don’t last for long, so you may need to replace them regularly, but they smell wonderful!

Vinegar

Make a solution of equal parts vinegar and water in a spray bottle. Use this spray along any trails you might find in your house and wipe it off. The vinegar will mask the pheromones and deter ants that may want to follow those trails.

You can also use vinegar to spray baseboards, cracks, and any other places where ants might enter the home as a repellent.

Eliminate Food and Water Sources

While this seems obvious, it’s always important to remember that ants usually try to come inside for food or water. Whenever possible, make sure that any enticements are eliminated to keep them out of the home.

Frequently Asked Questions