My apple tree has an ant bed by the trunk (small black ants). What can I do to destroy all the ants? Would diatomaceous earth be OK?
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id try it. put down when you know theres a few dry days coming.
Would it affect the fruitlets if I spray a water + diatomaceous earth solution on a fruit tree?
I have to deal with fire ants near some of my apple trees. They seem to be more attracted to the ones that are planted on a mound. I’m hesitant to just dump normal ant killer around my trees. It takes longer but I sometimes spray the mound with neem/water and sometimes with just dawn/water. This method sometimes take more than one application but eventually they either die or move on.
Diatomaceous Earth (DE) should not be mixed with water, it only works on ants (and some other insects) when it’s a dry powder. DE is not a chemical insecticide; when in the dry powder form it contains tiny sharp crystals, and ants got cut when walking on them like a human would be cut walking on broken glass. When watered, the crystals become glued together and loose their sharp edges, thus making them useless against ants.
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no. but DE works best dry. id cover the hole w/ DE forcing the ants to burrow thru it. killing them.
Sugar and borax is a excellent ant killer
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But would borax+sugar mixture harm the tree if the ants were to bring it back to the nest?
I assume it would help it with calcium uptake, and it requires very little borax to sugar. 3 TBL of borax to 1 cup of sugar and you only need a small amount. (to be fair i add more borax and less sugar) and dont put it somewhere dogs or cats will eat it although my animals have shown no interest in it, it also kills rats but in higher doses.
Use ant baits - you do not need to put substance on soil. They will come to the feeder. They will bring food into the colony to feed the mother, this will kill whole colony.
and when they bring the bait back to the colony,that small amount wouldn’t harm the soil/tree, right?
They feed it directly to the mother. But even if they drop some, it will not affect the tree. The most often ingredient there is boric acid - in small doses it is also a fertilizer.
No all plants actually need a small amount of boron. You will find it in complete fertilizers.