Due to the extreme dry weather, the *Fire) ants chewed the tips off the end of some of my plants, killing about 4 of them. I used Parenhtian 10 lightly around the base and a little heavier around the rim of the inside of the container. I knew that bastards was going to be a prob.. so I started a procedure... Once the Baby is transplanted in it's 5 gal. container, the root system is far from the bottom of the container, so I set the container in 2 inches of ant poison. That puts a damper on their ass, without hurting the little plant.