Just moved into an old house... huge ANT nest in flower bed :)
bobwilson
Posts: 9
We just moved into an old house, the garden is full of moss, weeds (and daffodills!
)... I noticed lines of ants running up the driveway for a while but thought nothing more of it.
I have been de-weeding some of the flower beds (quite tricky around the daffs!), but there is one particular bed near the house that as I dug the weeds out, discovered it's full of ants. It looked/ felt like there was almost no soil in there and 80% ants. I aired the soil for a bit, and moved onto the next part, but it seems the ants nest goes along all 5 metres of the flower bed, near the house.
Perhaps not for the squeamish 
Whilst weeding you couldn't see the fingers of my garden gloves, covered in black ants, after they were starting to get a bit much on my arms and face, I stopped the weeding. I've seen ants of this concentration in large forest ant hills in europe, but not in a UK garden until now.
I'm all in favour of having an eco-system in the garden, but is there anything I can or should do about that particular bed? I'm not sure how any plants will survive there as it's an underground ant cavern 
Just out of interest, I've noticed quite a lot of large house spiders running around outside the house in that area, I guess this must be what they're enjoying! 
Actually I hadn't realised they feed on ants.. is it possible?
I hope I don't sound like a meanie but I'm not sure the situation can stay the way it is, I look forward to advice, thanks
Posts
I too found an absolutely enormous (but hopefully no as big as yours) nest yesterday, so I'm watching this with interest.
Mine is around a fence post and running behind three upright paving slabs, which retain next doors patio, which is c. 0.5 m higher than ours. My ants sem to be extending - they had uprooted one of my young sweet pea plants last night! God knows how far under the garden they go - I stopped digging once I saw the baby ants
Paper Flowers, I would have kept digging, the baby ants would be a nice snack for the birds.
I think in both cases it would have been out with the ant powder for me, a friend had this happen once, and didn't do anything about it until they moved into his house - I'm not joking, his white UPVC kitchen door was literally black with them. He's particularly squeamish, so he called rentokil or some other such pest controller, I'd see how to go with ant powder. Rentokil were particularly helpful when I rang to complain one of their electric traps had malfunctioned (red light was flashing, bloody mouse still alive, don't know who was most surprised, me or the mouse), and asked for advice about getting rid of them (we still get the occaisonal refugee at harvest time), we are quite rural where we are (edge of village) and the farmer has been prosecuted for throwing all sorts onto his dung heap (dead chickens, pigs, you name it, it's been on there). Farmer still in business, but now built a 10foot wall around his premises, and the stench coming from there on some days is unbearable - anyway, that's for the rant thread. I think I'd buy some ant powder, and then ring the helpline number on there, to make sure it's OK to use on flowerbeds.
I'd do it TODAY, you really don't want the problems my friend had getting rid of the ants (or the bill for it). I'd also be concerned about foundations if they're nesting right next to / underneath your house!
Spread it out and pour boiling water over the site. No poisons involved. There were a lot of ant hills last year, probably trying to stay above water
In the sticks near Peterborough
My father had sandy soil and ants were a nuisance, he a quiet kindly man would pour petrol round the nest and drop a match on it, end of problem, we had no H&S back then though.
Frank.
I've whipped out the ant powder and squirted (puffed??) liberally all over what I exposed and down into the as many holes as I could see.
MMP no way could I have kept on digging, there were so many ants and they actually SMELLED
. Not strong, but a definite odour. Yeah, my ants are definitely gonna have to go - they're 2m from the house, if not closer depending how much nest there is under ground.
Hello chaps,
apparently if you leave dried corn meal in their path they take it back and eat it and then it swells up and kills them off, I've not tried this myself so I can't say either way.
However I did have a small to med sized nest last year near the veggie patch so put a few pots of mint around and about.... I think they just moved next door but hey.... not on my patch!
Yes I've heard you can do the same thing with a 50:50 mix of baking soda and icing sugar. I assume ant powder is the same sort of thing though - they eat it and take it back the nest and feed it to their compatriots and die. I hope it's not meant to work instantly, cos there's a lot of white ants running around among my sweet peas and not dying as of yet...
I shall try a kettle of boiling water next... Possibly infused with mint...
I have several in my front lawn, but i dont wory too much as i can weed the beds from the paths. When i ve been out there with the lawn mower i do notice there are more birds around. Other than that i would use boilig water.
I wouldn't recommend Frank's petrol answer - quick way to burn your hair off, or worse.
My mother always used boiling water, but not on the earth as that would kill a lot of other organisms, but on concrete or terrace/ patio.