Ants in compost

I put out my clippings last fall to compost. It is in a rubbermaid composting container. I have never had a problem before and I only put in leaves, grass, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc. Never meat, fat, or milk products.

I opened my composter today to get some of my "gardners gold" and it is totally infested with "sugar ants, or piss ants." They all started running with their eggs.

Can I still use this compost or will I infest my garden with ants? Do I spread it out and hope they leave? What would cause the ants to inhabit my compost?

I had tons of worms though!! Woo Hoo!

Any ideas?

Thanks
Deb

Glad I caught this thread,I have the same problem,to include worms.The ants seem to cohabat with the worms,and don't seem to bother them,but i don't need them in the garden either.I have learned that the common,or non fire ant has changed its nature because of the heavy presants of the fire ant,and will get into places they have never use to go.Back to our issue,a little amdro will rid the ants,and not hurt the worms,as long as you put it on top of the pile,and cover it with something.Yes,the compost is still good. Mike

Thanks Mike! Id hate to think that I lost a whole batch of good compost. I was amazed today when working in the garden and the half that I had mixed with compost was so rich and easy to dig in. The side that I didnt get to due to not enough compost is still hard clay. I was a bit sceptical that some compost would rejuvinate that clay soil but I am a believer now!!!! And it's free too. Not often you get great stuff free.

Deb

what is amdro?

roxroe,
Amdro is a fire ant poison that works like food - the ants take it into the nest and feed it to everyone including the queen(s). It is NOT a quick kill, but a sure one.

Problem can be severe if the fire ant population is well established - they may have several queens in a single nest, and the nests may be interconnected. TX and FL A&M universities have cooperated on this and other southern/coastal problems and once dug up a field of several acres with many mounds to find the interconnections and up to 50 queens in a single mound.

Logic is another solution, but expensive - it causes sterile males, but if neighbors don't treat their property, the next swarm can scatter more queens your way.

I have used most of the products on the market, as well as stomping them, using jalapeno juice, boiling water, flooding, etc.

Over & Out seems to keep then at bay for a few months, but not a year as claimed.

Garden center advice I get from Houston sources is: Change insecticides at least once a year.

Good luck.

Amdro is a neurotoxin and should not be used. If you have ants in your compost pile, it is because it is too dry. You can kill ants with a mixture of 2 ounces of orange oil per gallon of water. Amdro will hurt the worms, so will the orange oil if it hits them directly, but the orange oil and water mix will break down and benefit your soil unlike amdro. The only thing I use for fire ants is horticultural cornmeal. The kind you find at feed stores. Spinosad is acceptable in a sustainable program as well.

Yea, I agree, but I don't put the amdro where the worms can get to it, but the fire ants can, and will, since amdro is a bait.What I do is put the amdro in a can on thecompost, where the can will keep the amdro dry, lay it on its side, slanted down hill, where the ants can go in and take it home to queenie, and we have a repeat of "jones town".The worms won't know anything about it.Mike

I notice this is an old thread that was revived...is there a reason to kill the ants? I prefer to not have ants marching across my kitchen floor but I don't see much reason to kill off non-fire ant in the garden.

- Brent

Glad to know in advance it's the moisture in my compost pile that's keeping the ants out, cause I am PILING on the table scraps and the worms are loving it!

I started off with a few scrawny worms, tossing in every one I found from other areas of the yard. Last weekend I made a trench for more table scraps and the worms were HUGE!. At least 5" and fat, fat, fat!

Now. A word of Serious warning!!!

Hear me well, people. Do NOT. I repeat. DO NOT tell your DHs about the huge, FAT worms in your compost piles. Especially, if your DH is a fisherman!!!! duh!!!!!

...and do not tell your squeamish wife about the thousand solider fly larvae in your compost pile. It grossed me out a bit and I know that my wife would have forced me to take my bins to the dump.

- Brent

Can someone refer me to a site that explains the reproduction of worms?

soldier fly larvae?

How about diatomaceous earth for the ants?

You mean maggots??!!! I HATE maggots!!!

I have only seen Soldier Fly Larvae once in my compost (I have been composing off and on for 12 or so years), but there sure were a lot of them. If you search around you will find that they are counted as beneficial to the composting process.

http://images.google.com/images?um=1&tab=wi&hl=en&q=soldier+fly+larvae

- Brent

AMDRO WILL KILL ALL THE BENEFICIAL MICRO ORGANISMS THAT FEED THE SOIL ALONG WITH THE WORMS. 1 TB ORANGE OIL TO A GALLON OF WATER WILL KILL THE ANTS AS WELL AS DIATOMACEOUS EARTH WIL KEEP YOUR COMPOST HEALTHY AND ALIVE!!! dON'T KILL YOUR SOIL IT'S JUST MORE EXPENSIVE TO REPLACE MOTHERNATURE THAN TO SUPPLEMENT

So the next question is, where to buy orange oil? (only found it on the Internet in large drums...???) My local hardware store--that prides itself on its garden dept--tried to convince me that orange extract is the same thing and could be found in the spice section at the grocery store. Not convinced, I tried the Dekalb Farmers Market. Lo and behold, they sell 12-oz bottles of pure orange oil (along with pure lemon oil and pure lime oil), in the section with the fancy olive oils, etc. If the 2 Tbsp per gallon of water recipe drives the ants out of the compost, I'll have to find some recipes to use the rest!

This is a wonderful website, it's so great to have access to so much gardening experience and expertise!

Your local supermarket should have orange oil in the cleaning aisle.

I know nothing about the orange oil, but I do know that the compost worms reject citrus rines, such as orange,lemon/lime,grapefruit,etc.Will this cause the worms to leave, along with the ants???Don't know.Mike

So what's wrong with ants in the compost, or in the garden for that matter? I have ants but have no problem with them as long as they're not in my house.

Karen

Oooh!! You don't have fire ants!!There is nothing wrong with ants in the compost.They help on areation.When I hear of ANTS, I'm think fire ants, and they will run every thing, to include you out of the compost.Mike

But the poster asked about "sugar" ants, not fire ants.

As i said, I have ants in my compost and in my yard, they're welcome as far as I'm concerned. My yard is loaded with all kinds of things-ants, worms, birds, bees, butterflies, and all kind of bugs, the names of which I have never known.

The house is mine, but the outside is theirs...

Karen

If you have ants in your compost pile (as I did earlier this year) then it is a sign that you are letting your compost pile dry out too much.

- Brent

if your compost piles(s) are in the active 'heating' stage, you will not find any ants (or worms) in it. A 'cold' pile will have ants and worms.....

Fork the pile over, adding a bit of wet and a bit of dry compostable material to it during the 'rebuild' if you want it to heat up and finish cooking.

That should get things cooking again, and get rid of the ants.

I've got a compost pile that registered 50 degrees celcius last Thursday.....

.... which is 122 in our language, lol (thought I'd stop the rush to the conversion tables!).

All I have is manure. It's just not working for me 8* P ....

oooohhhhh, that same pile was 64 degrees celcius this morning before I left for work........ how high will it go? !!!!!

Pagancat, I remember reading somewhere (long time ago, lol) and think that fresh manure will heat....... hot beds...... something about digging a pit (or making a bin) filling with fresh manure and leaving to cook..... the stuff will heat up like mad, then drop in temp when cooked....good for starting seeds in a colder climate when the temps get back down to 75 F or so......

heating up like that will kill any parasite larvae.......

... and denature the wormers, too - bonus. I think the temps top out in the 160 range - ?

Right now I just have it stacked up in a pile on the ground, along with anything else I'm composting. I knew I'd need a bin or something, but I'm actually going to downsize this pile in order to start spreading manure in my pastures.... I'm sure you saw the thread on Equine about harrowing.

Gotta do something fast; the flies are beyond atrocious.

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack - back to the ants!!!

Hi, I was going to ask the same question, I went to mine yesterday to get some of the good stuff off the bottom that had already composted and there they were. Fire ant. I read in one of the posts that they would kill everything.
So, they are different? Do I need to kill them or just let them go

My place is infested with ants, they get in the cat and dog food, in my kitchen sink, and even in my stove.

I am using boric acid, mixed with molasses. It doesn't get the ants right away, but it does work over night, or in a bad case two nights. They take the boric acid back to the nest. Im sure a lot of boric acid is not a good thing, but I think it is less toxic than most solutions. I put a tsp of the mixture on a piece of cardboard in the ant trails. When the ants are gone, the cardboard pieces go in the regular trash, not in the compost.

I'm not sure, but I think boric acid would be a bad thing in with the worms.Aside from that I know of no other danger in boric acid in small quanities.(Given my HS chemistry grade, I'm no authority.) Mike

Studies have shown that most synthetic and even some organic (pyrethrum) pesticides are directly linked to Parkinson's Disease. Compost is good for your garden if it is done right. That means no poison should be used in it. Compost will help negate the damage done by toxic materials, but you really do not need to use them at all. For one thing, they really do not work. Think about it. How long have we been fighting the imported fire ant? How many billions of pounds are distributed on mounds per year? Don't you think they would be gone by now if this stuff worked?

If you have ants in your compost pile, the compost pile is too dry. If it has not rained in a while, water them (using a shower - type watering wand if possible). If your compost pile is hot as it should be, if there is high microbial activity, ants will not be an issue. To increase the heat, turn your piles often (once or twice a week is good) with a pitchfork or shovel. Add some liquid molasses mixed with water (1-2 ounces per gallon). You should be able to get this at any feed store. If they do not have it and if they are willing, they can order it for you. Dry molasses is good as well. It is not 100% molasses, it is molasses sprayed on to wheat bran or something similar. From what I understand, there is only about 7-9 ounces of molasses in each 40 pound bag.

Although it is better than synthetic pesticides, orange oil is harmful to the beneficial organisms as well. It will kill earth worms if it hits them directly.

Boric acid should only be used inside. Outside it will wreak havoc on your soil!

Boric acid can be hard to get now. I had to have a local pharmacy special order it for me. They said it is poisonous, therefore not on store shelves. However, when I was a kid, we used boric acid as an eye wash. It was long before Visine or Murine. We had an "eye cup" in the medicine cabinet, used by the whole family without sterilization. And nobody got eye infections.

It was the cure for those sensitive, burning eyes from the chlorine in the city swimming pools. Allergy eyes, too.

Now, it's too dangerous to be readily available.

Karen

You can usually find, boric acid roach killer at a hardware or dollar store.
Its not pharmaceutical grade, but then the roaches/ants don't care. I make ant baits by smearing mollasses on a piece of cardboard, the mixing the boric acid into a paste. The ants are usually gone over night or in a day. Do not put the cardboard in the compost when the ants are done with it. And keep away from dogs. They love to lick off the molasses.

Use only when you are being run out of your home by roaches or ants.

I havent seen any ants in my compost heaps/bins, but after reading this thread I am quite curious WHY ants would be a problem in the compost or garden. Other than that the heap may be too dry.

I find the odd small ants nests in the dry areas of the garden right up against the house, but no ants inside miraculously. Small black ants. I just leave them to it. I do find quite a few baby centipedes and worms in the compost though. Saw a giant centipede a while ago, exquisite specimen, about 15cm long! I felt quite honored that it chose to live in my garden, and relieved that I hadnt damaged it with my pitchfork. I think they may be a native NZ variety... not sure though.

What are fire ants? I dont think we have them in NZ.

Edited to add: Giant Centipede (NZ native) "Cormocephalus rubriceps ", couldnt find it on bugfiles, but found it here.

http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/education/insects_spiders/pare/centipede.asp

This message was edited Nov 1, 2007 8:00 AM

LenaBean: If you don't have fire ants in NZ, you are lucky and I hope you never get them.

They have invaded the s. United States from Mexico. The are in the South from Texas to Alabama, but I understand they have not crossed the Tennessee River yet into Tennessee.

They are mound building ants that sting. Some people are allergic to the stings. I was curator of a museum near here. Some Dutch visitors stepped on a fire ant hill. The girl was unconscious from the stings. I called the ambulance and the couple was taken away to the hospital for emergency treatment. I still remember that girl with her eyes rolling back into her head.

Normally the ant bites just leave a small puss-filled lesion on the skin.

That sounds gruesome!!! So these little devils could just sneak up un you anytime you sit in the grass, or heaven forbid, dig in the garden???! Or are they easy enough to avoid? I will look them up on bugfiles, see what I can find.
I was bitten by an ant in Germany a few years ago, dont know what type it was. It stung for about 20mins, but no puss.
Thanks for the info Gloria.

LenaBean" They usually are pretty consolidated in colonies. The main way you get into them is to step on would of their mounds by not watching where you are going. Im sure the Dutch couple didn't expect them, so that's why the young lady was so badly bitten.

Ever notice that fire ants all bite at the same time? How do they know to do that? You won't even know they are on you and then all of the sudden you are being bitten by 20 at one time.

Anyway, my compost ALWAYS has fireants in it. I have round, fence type bins. When I am ready to turn it, I undo the fencing and start flooding it. Go back a few hours later and they are gone.

I flood all hills I see or mix different hills together. It really seems to help with keeping the population of fire ants down. I agree that the ants are in compost to keep from getting wet. Anyone ever heard of floating fireants during flooding? Not a fun thing to encounter http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/environment/insects/ants/fire_ants/hurricane_katrina/Be+On+Lookout+For+Fire+Ants+In+Areas+Where+Flooding+Occurred.htm

pieohmy: Page not found. Re: your link.

I agree that mixing the ant hills seems to be the best defense against fireants. there have been various efforts to poison them around here
that haven't worked. I must say that I haven't seen many this year in the drought and heat, but I have seen regular ants stealing the dog and cat food, and invading the kitchen.

I wonder if the regular ants haven't out competed the alien fire ants.

I've heard the synchronized biting has to do with phermones, much like a hive of bees stinging.