What's safe for treating the yard?

[Sara Ranch]

1. For tick repellent - geranium, rose, citrus -- one drop each behind the ear/back of neck & on pants/ankle area. I also do a drop on my wrists because I wear gloves often and spend so much time outside with the animals. You could blend the oils to make one mixture (I haven't made the time to do that) and then do the drops.

If you are using this mixture on your dog, make sure it's been diluted with a carrier oil and put a TINY drop on the dogs backside, at the base of the tail. Watch your dog to make sure it's ok with the oils. You can also place a TINY drop on the back of the dog's neck, backside.

One application is usually good for the whole day. I do mine early (between 5-6 am most mornings) and it's still working at 8:30 pm at night. I do have really gross, sweat dripping down my body days...it still works. Although sometimes, end of those sweaty wet days, the gnats will fly near me. Normally, ALL bugs leave me alone with that combo!

2. For fire ants - yes, cornstarch should work. The theory is that the ants carry the starch back to their nest, everyone partakes in the feast, can't digest the starch, and die. It's worked on big ants, like the carpenter ants, for me in the past.

I encourage ants in the garden because they are GREAT pollinators! Fire ants, eh, probably would NOT encourage those guys.

3. What else?

 

[Mamato6]

@Sara Ranch thanks! For citrus oils on hand at the moment is lemon and tangerine. One of my blends might have the other two. I already have Citronella on hand cause of the stupid mosquitoes, I'll have to make a blend for fleas and ticks
Peppermint works wonders for the ants where they're coming into the house for like a day or so, but haven't been able to get to knocking out where they're coming from so they just keep getting back in, to the point where my fairly new bottle of peppermint is gone. I have to order more but there is enough in the bottle (the rest won't come out) where I can put some FCO in the bottle and put a roller fitment on top cause my 9 yr old gets headaches a lot so I do peppermint on the temples and she sniffs copaiba from the bottle.
I'm thinking of doing a cornstarch/DE mixture by all the ant mounds I see!

 

[Sara Ranch]

Orange essential oil has worked very well for me in the past to deter (and then gone) the ant march into the house. I would put a trail of the oil at the entry points and along the path the ants would take. It was a week (?) before the ants stopped coming completely.

Borax works well too. Depends on the kind of ant.

I love using peppermint oils as a deterrent for rodents! It works really well! (I'm into essential oils - can you tell?)

 

[chickengeorgeto]

@Sara Ranch, do you think the cornstarch will work on little red fire ants?

A little known fact needs to be told here. Adult fire ants don't eat anything that they find, forage, or kill in their environment. Adult fire ants lack mandibles that can chew
so it is a physical impossibility for them to eat things like cornstarch etc. More on this later.

All that monkeying around with the ants' mound accomplishes is to encourage them to relocate the mound, often by no more than 20 feet from the original location.

If any of the insect pests mentioned were in the least bit deterred by garlic or citrus oils in any form then fire ants would not bite humans who have to taste like oranges, lemons, garlic, grapefruit, or any number of other human food stuffs. I just wanted to see how far or ridiculous the proposals would go. I have not been disappointed. Unfortunately.

Permethrin or the natural version, pyrethrin fits the bill for an insecticide that is safe for puppies, chicks, deer, bunnies, or any other warm blooded vertebrate.

Fire ants dismantle small creepy crawlies and feed the disjointed bits to their young. The ant larvae eat this protein and spit up a liquid form of ant food that the adult fire ants are able to drink or sip. Fire ant baits are designed to take advantage of this weakness and kill the fire ant larvae which starves the entire adult population, workers, soldiers, and ant queens included. I will say this, cornstarch, cornmeal, and corn grits are often used as the carrying agent for Permethrin and Pyrethrin while using bacon grease to attract the ants. Permethrin and Pyrethrin also works well for fleas and other COLD BLOODED INVERTEBRATES.

 

[moawahine]

Here is an article from a local newspaper where I live about LFA (little fire ants).

Iʻve used DE on roosting bars and coops ... and the LFA steer clear!