Summer is one of the best times of the year. But with summer comes an obnoxious amount of household pests–especially ants. Let’s face it, nothing kills a mood quite like opening the sugar container only to see a group of ants helping themselves! The good news is that you can conquer those ants before they get inside your home. Without harmful chemicals! Kill ants naturally with something that is probably inside your pantry right this minute.
Unfortunately, ants are a problem for just about everyone at one time or another. But killing them doesn’t need to involve poisons or other harsh chemicals. Those chemicals aren’t just harmful to the ants–they can also harm your children or pets. There is a better way!
Do you know that ants leave a scented trail for other ants to follow? This scented trail allows them to get to and from their nests without getting lost. The good news? This trail can help you kill ants naturally.
How to Kill Ants Naturally with Cornstarch
If you find ants in your home, you have to determine where that ant trail begins. Once you find it, grab the cornstarch from your pantry. Sprinkle the cornstarch along the ants’ trail. Be sure to cover that scented trail so that ants who come along will pick up the cornstarch on their legs and carry it back to the nest. Leave this cornstarch trail out for 24 hours.
Once the ants have had a chance to pick up plenty of dry cornstarch, pull out a spray bottle. Fill the bottle with water and spray any ants you see. Be careful to not get them wet enough to wash off the cornstarch. The water reacts with the cornstarch and creates a cement-like mixture as it dries. As it dries, it traps and kills the ants.
Rinse or sweep away the cornstarch after you see lots of dead ants in the trail. NOTE: this method may take a few hours to be fully effective. But be patient and you will notice a difference. This method to kill ants naturally works both indoors and outdoors!
Do you want to deter ants out in your garden without killing them? Use cinnamon!
Wow! will this work for fire ants?
Best way to get rid of fire ants is diatomaceous earth. Pour it on their nest, it will dehydrate them.
Diatomaceous Earth Is the best and only way I kill any bugs since it is natural and non harmful to people and animals unless you have a exoskeleton. Plus as a added bonus it’s food grade and you can eat it for other health benefits. It’s also pretty darn inexpensive.
Haven’t tried that one but will give it a shot…Cinnamon is very effective in keeping the critters away from the house just dust areas they are traveling…But mixing boric acid or Borax with honey or agave nectar for sweet loving ants works wonders as well…a tried & true natural anticide.
Don’t forget though, that boric acid or borax while a very effective pest killer can be a no no around small pets and small people (children), so do your research so you won’t regret it.
What happens to pets and children?
i swear by boric acid…swear by it!!!!!!!!! I never thought about puttig it with something sweet to attract them. The little bastards, every spring i have to get skeeved out!!!!!!!!!
Where is the article that says what the on ingredient is?
Hey John! I am so sorry that you are having issues viewing the ingredient used to kill ants! If you use the arrows located on the page, it will scroll through the list, and allow you to see the natural ingredient. Good luck, and thank you for reading!
Unless it is non GMO corn starch, it is not evident that it is the corn starch that kills the ants or the pesticides in the corn starch that does the trick. I don’t see this as an organic alternative unless it is non GMO. 🙁
I don’t know where the ants enter my house. The ants are in the kitchen, bathroom, utility room. There aren’t a lot of them but I can always count on seeing several every day.
Never had ants in my home until this spring after having a deck built. I tried everything “natural” & nothing worked. They were marching in by the hundreds. Sprayed the main tunnel with vinegar, then with bleach, then sprinkled food grade diatomaceous earth inside and out my home, made ant bait, bought ant bait ….. Nothing worked. Unfortunately, had to resort to having my home sprayed in crawl space & around foundation by a pest company (refused to allow they to spray inside). It’s the only thing that worked and yes, it smelled like heck. And none of the above works on fire ants, included pouring club soda on their hill. I believe all these insects have adapted to all the toxins around us and now new, more potent ones, must be developed to treat them. Just like us and prescription drugs not eradicating diseases. Scary world out there will all the poisons we are subjected to on a daily basis.
We live in Florida during the summer and the fire ants are terrible. We pour plain dry gritts in the holes and they eat it, expand and die. Inside nothing has worked. We get bitten by the black ants and the bites get infected quickly. we have sprayed the yard and it keeps it for a week and they come back.
cinnamon has worked for us in VA.
What I found works everytime is grits. Pour it on and around their ant hill when it is not supposed to rain or leave it on the trail they use.
Pour boiling water down their hole. Depending on the size of the nest, it may take a few times.
Talcomb powder works a treat. Sprinkle into and around the nest.
In a clean water/soda bottle cap mix white sugar and table salt and put it were you see the ants. The salt should be about 95% and the white sugar 5%. I have used this and it is very effective and it is very pet and small child friendly. The ants take the sugar or the salt (will dehydrate the queen) back to the queen. Yes the sugar will feed the queen but only a couple of grains of salt will kill the queen. It can take up to a week for this to work. For me the 1st time it took only a day or two and the second time it took about 5 days or so. I have done this twice with different ants in the 10 years we have live in our house. The ants have not come back.
Use half baking soda and powdered sugar. Put out in cracks and wherever ants travel for about a week. They pack it to their nest and eat it. Gives them gas and they can’t let it off and it kills them.May take a couple of weeks to die off but they stay gone for about 6 months.
You can also put seasalt as a barriere.the ant will not tress pass this line.
I used to work for a pesticide products company and they made a well known ant destroyer. Their product was effectively Borax disolved in a sugar solution. The ants fed on the solution and took it back to feed the queen. The queen subsequently died and in turn so did the ant colony.
Just put a few drops down on something like a broken ceramic tile where the ants are passing to a from their nest and let them get on with it.
I live in a hot, dry rural area in Australia. A few paddocks away is an old (100 + years) bayleaf tree. We accidently destroyed a nest excavating for new foundations… had a swarm of ants into the house. This was two years ago. I used bay leaves…in the cracks, crevices, entrances where ants had been seen. They have not returned. I didn’t kill them; however they seem to have found another place to reside.
Spray vinegar with soapy water is not much effective to kill ant.
I suggest making the mixture stronger. Add more vinegar! Hope this helps!
Lived with fire ants for the 10 years we lived in TX. I could control them by pouring a mixture water and orange oil into the mounds. 1/4 C orange oil in a gallon of water. I would circle the mound with DE then pour the oil into the mound. It would drive the surviving ants away. I could not realistically get rid of all the ants because the land was riddled with their mounds, but the citrus mix would keep them out of the house and keep the worse mounds inactive. Learned the hard way not to bury you beloved pets, the ants take over the area.
if anyone ever doubts how well DE works, find someone or someplace that are fighting an infestation of bed bugs, we all know it s virtually impossible to get rid of them permanently. i was confronted with this 3 years ago, i even bought a 200.00 vapo steam cleaner from bed bug supply, all their mattress and pillow covers, their chemicals etc, tried some of my own findings, heat guns, and heat works well but you have things that you can’t get that hot without destroying them. for weeks i fought them, and all this time i had plenty of DE in my garage, bags of it, i had discovered it years earlier and used it all over outside and in for roaches and ants etc, even in litter boxes to help dry and kill invaders, for cat areas for fleas, i guess i was so intent on the fight it slipped my mind, i bought a puffer from bed bug supply, amazon carries it too, i made a shaker from plastic jug with big holes and went to work, using the puffer i put it inside walls through electric outlets and switches and fixtures, under base boards, took mattress covers off and just spread big layers of dust all inside and zipped it all up, turned couches and chairs upside and thoroughly covered all inside them, pulled carpet loose around edges and blew as much as i could as far as i could, in 3 days there wasn’t a bed bug left alive and none returned since. these motels that use chemicals, the pesticide company’s, health dept etc, should be ashamed of themselves for not making the public aware of how well this works and the safety aspect. hope this helps someone
If you make a small hip of finely ground coffee and set the top on fire, the little buggers will sacrifice themselves in this miniature volcano! Added bonus, other insects will keep away from the smoke.