Help! Ants are colonizing in my 5 gallon pots!!

So in my backyard i have about 70-80 5 gallon pots spread around my yard (going to build raised garden beds very soon!) and i noticed that in ALOT of the pots there are massive ant colonies growing inside the bottom of the pots!!!! there are so many ants... and when i water the plants i see thousands of ands running around carrying baby ant larvae sacks.. its quite funny actually.. but its getting out of control does anyone have any light they can shed? thank you!

well if there isnt any plants in them yet lol water those bitches down

yea there are plants in all the pots! haha. would this even do damage to the plant?

Are they those little 1/4" sugar ants? They won't harm your plants and they might even be tiny little guard dogs. Don't let them start ranching aphids though ... cn

Um well not really bad its called flushing lol. It gets rid of the nutes in the soil, and as long as the water drains out of the dirt it will be fine just make sure you wait until the soil dries to water again

no i meant would the ants colonizing cause damage to the plants. not the flushing lol i know THAT much

i too have wondered this. ive always killed them personally. i just dunked the bottoms of my plants in a big tub of water (only for a few seconds) and then id put it back on its drip tray. usually there wouldnt be too many that survived.

another idea is get a bag of sugar or something and put it near the plants somewhere...distract them with that and then dispose of the sugar or whatever you choose to use (ie. candy bar, etc)

im no expert but its worth a shot.

themanwiththeplan said:

i too have wondered this. ive always killed them personally. i just dunked the bottoms of my plants in a big tub of water (only for a few seconds) and then id put it back on its drip tray. usually there wouldnt be too many that survived.

another idea is get a bag of sugar or something and put it near the plants somewhere...distract them with that and then dispose of the sugar or whatever you choose to use (ie. candy bar, etc)

im no expert but its worth a shot.

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All that will do is feed the queen, that's what the workers do. The kill a colony you have to kill the queen. The only way to use sugar is to mix it with peanut butter and borax. Then the workers bring it back and kill the bitch. The problem with this is....well....using borax.

Sunbiz1 said:

All that will do is feed the queen, that's what the workers do. The kill a colony you have to kill the queen. The only way to use sugar is to mix it with peanut butter and borax. Then the workers bring it back and kill the bitch. The problem with this is....well....using borax.

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well doing my method did get rid of the ants. there was a few here and there for a few days after but nothing like the monster colony i walked in on the first time. im referring to the dunking the pot in water. first i banged on all the pots to get them out then dunked it.

im not saying its fool proof but its fast, quick, and inexpensive lol

Originally i didnt dunk the pot as a solution...more like a quick fix to at least kill a good portion of them to make it more easy to manage.

im a hard head so i usually sit there and kill them by hand (ie damp paper towel and my hand lol)

hahaha dude you crack me up lol. im going to try dunking the pots!! i just dont want to use ANY kind of pesticide. i am not a buddhist but i just hate the idea of contaminating plants with chemical fertilizers and pesticides D:

gearaholic said:

hahaha dude you crack me up lol. im going to try dunking the pots!! i just dont want to use ANY kind of pesticide. i am not a buddhist but i just hate the idea of contaminating plants with chemical fertilizers and pesticides D:

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lol thanks. i guess. i just did it because i had a huge bucket of open water sitting by my plants (i had issues with low humidity early in veg so i put like a huge 30 gal pot of water in there). well one day i open the door to the grow room and theres hundreds if not a thousand plus ants running all over the drip trays and pots (mostly on the bottom half of the pot)...so i just put two and two together.

it didnt full solve the problem but it killed off easily 70% or better immediately.

after you do it once id wait a half hour and go back and see how many more there are. i had a couple dozen that lived but most died easily.

its not scientific obviously but it worked for me.

i too am against using chemical pesticides and such as you really don't want to be ingesting that crap. so i stick to organics when it comes to pesticides if i use any at all (ie. neem oil and monterey pest spray and thats about it)

Look into diatenacious earth!

Ants feed on the stuff left behind my aphids (aphid shit I guess). They will fight off beneficial insect to protect the aphids, enough reason to get rid of them.
I've been using spinosad. It is organic, biological and very effective. I use it on ants, flee beetles, boring worms and leaf eaters in general.
I even had great success on spider mites inside even though it studies show varied success. It is a great produce.

u like to spray theri trails and them with neem oil. it does not kill them but it seems to make them stay away. i spray the top of the soil.
i use neem for almost every thing now

try diatamacious earth. maybe put a ring of it around the pots, so the workers cant get food back to the queen, thus killing her. might be a pain in the ass with 80 plants though. i think DE no longer works when it gets wet. u have to reapply it